When George Washington reached Williamsburg at the end of October 1753 he found the taverns crowded with Burgesses. The General Assembly had been called to meet November 1, in circumstances that aroused more than the usual curiosity of Colonials eager for news. On October 21 a sloop of war had brought special dispatches to the Governor, who promptly had sent letters under the King’s seal to the executives of the other Colonies. The proclamation for an early session of the Virginia lawmakers had then been issued.
George soon learned part of the reason for this activity. At the Palace, he was ushered into the presence of the Governor. Dinwiddie was aroused and probably impressed by the importance of the steps he was about to take. On June 16 he had written the home government concerning the need of building forts to prevent the French from occupying the Ohio country. Dispatches of August 28 had brought him instructions that accorded with his judgment. Encouraging promises of military equipment had been made. As a first step, Dinwiddie had been instructed to warn the French of their encroachment and formally call on them to leave British territory.
Governor and Council accepted promptly George’s offer to carry the message. Orders were drafted. Without delay he was to proceed to Logstown and there call on friendly Indian Sachems for a guard to attend him as far as he thought proper en route to the French commanding officer. When he reached the French station, Washington was to present a letter, which Dinwiddie handed him, and demand a reply, for which he was to wait not more than a week. This answer having been given, Major Washington was to request a French escort on his way back to the Virginia settlements. In addition, George was to procure all the information he could of the numerical strength, armament, defences, communications and plans of the intruders.
Besides his written instructions, George received detailed verbal orders: He was to proceed first to Wills Creek and there deliver to Christopher Gist, an experienced frontiersman, a written request from the Governor and Council that Gist act as Washington’s guide on the mission. The Virginia messenger, moreover, was to inquire of the French why they had made prisoners of British subjects trading with the Indians and why they had driven trader John Frazier from the house where he had lived for twelve years. Finally, speed was enjoined.
This mission was assigned young Washington when sparkling autumn weather was turning to the rains and the bleakness of November. George knew how unpleasant that month could be; but he was being honored by the assignment, and he had such an opportunity as no young Virginian had enjoyed in his generation of winning reputation. Off he went to Fredericksburg, and as he rode he planned: Besides Gist as guide, he would need men to look after the horses and baggage and to pitch a tent. Unless Gist knew the Indian tongues, it would be necessary to procure an interpreter. Further, someone must make the journey who could translate French and converse in it. George believed he could procure such a man. To the vicinity of Fredericksburg in 1752 had come a young Hollander, Jacob van Braam. Though his English was meagre, he was said to have a knowledge of French.
On reaching Fredericksburg, November 1, George found van Braam, who agreed to accompany him; and the two set out for Alexandria. From Alexandria the road of the emissary and the interpreter was for Wills Creek, which they reached November 14. Near at hand, on the Maryland shore, was the cabin of Gist. When George delivered the letter which asked Gist to accompany the Major, the frontiersman consented. While Gist made ready, George hired four men as “servitors.” One of these, an Indian trader Barnaby Currin, was to prove himself capable of bearing some of the responsibility of the wilderness. Of the others, John MacQuire also had traded with the Indians, and Henry Steward had some knowledge of the frontier. When the party set out on November 15 it consisted of seven men with their horses and baggage. Everything had been included that Washington had thought necessary—even an “Indian dress” for the Major.
Washington was to find Gist capable of handling both compass and canoe, a man altogether conscientious in the performance of duty. More than any other man, Gist was to be George’s teacher in the art of dealing with the uncertain savages. George scarcely could have had a better instructor: he had now to demonstrate how apt a pupil he would be.
The opening days of George’s apprenticeship as a frontiersman were novel and interesting enough, but not exacting. He and the others climbed upward, descended to the narrow valleys, mounted again to the tops of the passes, and crossed the stony streams. The journey was as rapid as the difficult country permitted. Northward the men moved through the mountains and, as they advanced, encountered their first snow. George and his companions crossed the Youghiogheny November 19. On the twenty-second the Englishmen reached the Monongahela at the mouth of Turtle Creek, close to Frazier’s settlement.
The trader had much news to relate. Friendly natives recently had visited him and had left wampum and a message for the Governor of Virginia to the effect that three nations of French Indians had taken up the hatchet against the English. Frazier passed the wampum to George along with the warning. Another item of information was that French troops had been advancing towards the Ohio from Lake Erie when mounted messengers had arrived with news that the “General” of the French, Pierre Paul, Sieur de Marin, had died. After that, the greater part of the French had been withdrawn northward to winter quarters. In this intelligence, the good and the bad were mingled. George knew that Dinwiddie and the royal government depended, in large measure, on friendly Indians of the Six Nations for the defence of the Virginia frontier. As for the French withdrawal, it might have large meaning for the future and might give England an advantage.
On November 23 George reached the strategic objective of the rival English and French, the wind-swept, uninhabited point of land where the Allegheny received the waters of the powerful Monongahela. There, or nearby, Governor Dinwiddie planned to erect the fort that was to keep the French from the Ohio and the Monongahela. George studied the ground carefully in order to ascertain, if he could, how the nearer stretches of the rivers could be commanded by English guns. He reached conclusions which he jotted down in notes for the rough journal he was keeping. Later he elaborated his views to this effect: “The land in the forks . . . I think extremely well situated for a fort, as it has the absolute command of both rivers. The land at the point is twenty or twenty-five feet above the common surface of the water; and a considerable bottom of flat, well-timbered land all around it, very convenient for building.”
About the time George finished the examination of this site, Currin and Steward arrived with the canoe and the baggage. They unloaded safely on the farther side of the Allegheny and then ferried over the other members of the party. Camp was made on the shore. The night was uneventful but it opened an interesting and eventful day. Nearby lived the Indian Chief Shingiss, a Delaware whom it seemed wise to invite to the council George had been instructed to hold with the powerful Indian, Half King, at Logstown. Policy and politeness dictated a personal call on Shingiss and on a lesser Chief, Lowmolach. Shingiss and Lowmolach both were, when acquainted with George’s purpose, entirely agreeable: They would go at once with the white men to Logstown.
On the first march George ever had made with Indians, between sunset and dusk they came to a rich bottom where were the huts and the long house known as Logstown, scene of Indian conferences and the home of Half King. This was the beginning of the serious part of the mission. Now, under his instructions, George was to find Half King and the other Sachems and ask them to supply guards for the journey to the French post. George’s call on Shingiss had been of small importance compared with this visit. To deal with Half King, the most influential leader of the district, George needed an interpreter, because Gist had never learned the Indian tongues of that region. What Gist lacked, the well-known trader John Davison possessed, and attended by this experienced master of the Indian speech, George sought the Indian.
Half King was away at his cabin on Little Beaver Creek, but George learned that Monakatoocha, a Chief second only to Half King, was in the village and went to call ceremoniously on him. Through Davison, he explained that he was a messenger to the French commander and was directed by the Governor of Virginia so to inform the Sachems. Then, George presented the Chief a string of wampum and a twist of tobacco. This done, he asked Monakatoocha to send for Half King. When the Chief promised to dispatch a runner the next morning, George thanked him and invited him and the other great men of the tribe to visit the English tent. It was a satisfactory though not a brilliant interview.
MAP / 2
THE FORKS OF THE OHIO, 1754-1759
The next day, November 25, was one of sensation. Into the town came a small group of French deserters. George talked at length with them and with the man who had them in charge, a British fur trader named Brown. The French deserters said that they were part of a force of a hundred who had been sent up the Mississippi to meet at Logstown a similar detachment from the garrisons on the south side of Lake Erie. All this seemed to confirm what had been suspected at Williamsburg. George doubtless guessed that the French had intended to advance to the forks and build a fort there. Eagerly, therefore, he continued his first examination of deserters, a distasteful but indispensable military duty.
Word came at 3 P.M. that Half King had arrived from Little Beaver Creek. Etiquette required that the English visitor should make the first call. George accordingly went over to the Sachem’s cabin and met Half King. This cherished friend of the English was an intelligent man, vain, brave, as candid as an Indian ever was, and possessed of an unusual knowledge of white men and their methods of fighting. When his passion was stirred, Half King would assert that the reason he hated the French was that they had killed, boiled and eaten his father. More immediately he had a bitter grudge because of treatment he recently had received at the hands of the Sieur de Marin.
George found Half King more than willing to talk—anxious to give all the information he could and to set forth his grievances with the full fury of outraged pride. All routes were quickly described. The better of them was impassable because of the swamps made by the overflow of streams. It would be necessary to proceed via Venango. Five or six good days’ journeys would be required. This explained, Half King launched into an account of his visit to the French fort. He had been received by de Marin with much sternness and had been asked very brusquely what he wanted. Half King had prepared in advance a speech for the occasion, and as he told George of the episode he insisted on repeating the substance of what he had announced to the French commandant.
If Half King told the truth about his speech, it was a bold call on the French to leave the watershed of the Ohio. The Indian manifestly thought it a good speech, and he went on to tell George that he had followed it by returning to the French commander a string of wampum, symbolic of one the French had given the Indians when they had made a previous, amicable visit. Then the Chief gamely and with burning eyes repeated the defiant reply of de Marin, a reply deliberately phrased to humiliate the Redman. With few preliminaries, the Frenchman had demanded: “Where is my wampum that you took away, with the marks of towns in it? This wampum I do not know which you have discharged me off the land with. But you need not put yourself to the trouble of speaking, for I will not hear you.”
This had infuriated Half King; but, as repeated by him, it must have confused and alarmed and, at the same time, pleased George. George had new evidence of the French determination to occupy the Ohio, though he could afford to be happy that de Marin had outraged Half King’s pride. Half King explained what he had seen of French defences in the country between Logstown and Lake Erie. There were two forts, said the Chief. One was on the lake; the other was fifteen miles inland on French Creek and near a small body of water. A wide wagon road connected the two places. The forts were alike, though the one on Lake Erie was the larger. At length Half King left the tent with the understanding that he would assemble his great men to hear Washington’s request for an escort.
Next morning George greeted the assembled leaders and, with Davison as interpreter, undertook to explain his mission. What Washington asked in the way of an escort might involve Half King’s followers in a quarrel with French Indians or with the French themselves at a time when the English allies of the friendly tribes were far off. This danger probably had been increased by the clash between Half King and de Marin. If the Indians furnished a large escort and went boldly northward, they might be marching straight into a wintry war.
Half King was altogether for compliance with the Englishmen’s request. He was determined, in fact, to go back to the French fort and repeat to the new commandant what he had told de Marin. He urged the other Sachems to approve doing this, and after some discussion, they apparently acquiesced.
Half King’s promise had been that the guard would be ready to start on November 29, but early that morning he and Monakatoocha came to George’s tent with a plea for one more day. November 30 brought evidence that the friendly Chief might not always be able to control the other Sachems; four men only appeared with equipment for the trail. Half King explained that after he had visited Washington the previous evening he and the other Sachems had held a council at the Long House. Their conclusion had been against sending any large escort because, if they did so, the French might become suspicious and might treat them rudely. It would be better to send only the three “great men” with a single hunter. The young emissary might have been tempted to ask the Indians why they expected any other than a rude reception if they were, in effect, to notify the French of a rupture of friendly relations, but debate would delay a departure for which he had been waiting with far more impatience than he had shown. Off he went with his companions and his Indian friends on the trail.
Gist led the party toward the junction of French Creek and the Allegheny River. December 4 brought George to Venango. He knew the village was in French hands, but his heart must have beat faster when he saw the fleur-de-lis flying over the trading post from which Frazier had been driven.
George, with van Braam and Gist, went to the building. At the entrance the trio were met by three French officers whose leader introduced himself as Capt. Philippe Thomas Joincare. Politely, he invited the visitors to enter. Captain Joincare was the son of a Seneca squaw by a French officer, and he had been so reared that he could deal equally well with his mother’s and with his father’s people. From the time of his father’s death in 1740, Joincare had been the man to whom the French Indians of the region had looked for guidance. He operated the trading post and the portage at Niagara and made large profits from both. In the service of France, along with his rank as Captain, he had the title of Chief Interpreter for the Six Nations. Having accompanied Céloron on the expedition of 1749, he knew the Ohio country and the characteristics of the savages who dwelt on its upper watershed. He was one of the ablest and most resourceful of the French spokesmen in Canada.
The reception these men gave Washington was flawless. In answer to Washington’s inquiry concerning the French commander, to whom a communication was to be delivered, Joincare replied that he himself was in charge on the Ohio, but that there was a general officer at Fort Le Boeuf, close to Lake Erie. Joincare’s advice was that George carry his letter thither. Meantime, would Monsieur Washington and the other gentlemen sup with him and his comrades that evening? George was not pleased at having to go forty or fifty miles farther up the creek but he accepted the invitation to eat with the distinguished Captain. Washington left the Indians behind deliberately. Joincare set out for his guests the best he had and offered and drank wine in abundance. Most politely he promised a French escort for the messenger on the ride to Fort Le Boeuf. As he and the others talked to George, who kept sober and listened intently, their tongues and their Gallic pride were loosed. They had perceived that a contest for the Ohio was brewing. It was their design to take possession of the river, they said, and, by God, they would prevent the settlement of English on it or any of its tributaries.
Rain reasserted its power on December 5. The Indians had by that time become engaged in council with their allies the Delawares, who lived in and near Venango. Before long Joincare heard that a council had been held and that Half King was in it. He ordered one of his men to go to the natives’ camp and invite the Chiefs to visit him forthwith. When they arrived, Joincare did not display a touch of the biting sternness that de Marin had exhibited towards Half King. He acted as if these Indians were the closest of allies and the warmest of friends. How could they be so near, he inquired, and not come to see him? He made them a few presents and plied them with brandy until the savages were too drunk to realize what they were doing. Not a word could Half King say of the warning he had sworn he would give the French to leave the land. When George in disgust went back through the rain to his tent, he realized what previously he perhaps had sensed dimly—that he was engaged in a diplomatic battle with the French for the support of the Indians. He had come to deliver a message; he found himself called upon, with Gist’s understanding aid, to save an alliance.
This challenging turn of events was even plainer the next day. Early in the morning Half King was at the entrance to George’s tent, completely sober, probably ashamed of himself, and once again entirely resolute. It was his purpose to make his speech to the commander of the French and repeat his order that they quit the Indians’ country. Earnestly the Chief urged that they delay their departure long enough for him to serve this notice on Joincare.
George’s observation the previous day made him anxious not to expose the Chief again to the Captain’s wiles and wine. Besides, the mission must be completed as soon as possible. George tried to persuade Half King to withhold his warning until they reached Fort Le Boeuf. Half King would not yield: Joincare, he said, was to light a council fire at Venango; that was to be the place where all business of this sort was transacted; Joincare had sole management of Indian affairs. George unwillingly consented: There was no escape. He had to remain, listen, and take whatever risks might develop from Half King’s defiance of the French. He did not misjudge his orator. The council assembled about ten o’clock, but the preliminaries must have been interminable. Finally Half King began his speech. It was in substance the one he had delivered to the Sieur de Marin, but it produced no such effect on Joincare as it had on the French commander at the fort. When Half King reached his climax and returned the speech belt, Joincare refused to accept it. Displaying no anger, he insisted that the belt should be presented at Le Boeuf.
It had been a disquieting day of a sort George had not been called on to endure previously. The next, December 7, scarcely gave promise of being any better. Commissary La Force came to the Englishmen’s quarters with three soldiers and reported himself ready to escort Monsieur Washington to the fort. George and his white companions were prepared to start but the Indians were not there. Washington, in desperation, sent Gist to bring them to the trail. It was nearly eleven o’clock when the guide came back. He had the three Chiefs and the young hunter with him, but prevailing upon them to forego the allurements of Venango had taxed his powers of persuasion.
After sunset on December 11, the end of the fourth day on the trail, the party reached the point on the creek opposite Fort Le Boeuf, and George sent van Braam across to notify the commandant of his arrival. Several French officers came over in a canoe and invited the emissaries to the fort. Major Washington was agreeable, and soon was received, as Gist put it, “with a great deal of complaisance.” Nothing official was undertaken that evening.
As early as he thought polite the next morning George presented himself, with Gist and van Braam, at Headquarters. The second in command received him and ushered him into the presence of the senior officer of the post, the Sieur Legardeur de St. Pierre de Repentigny, Knight of St. Louis. He had been sent to the post after the death of de Marin and had been there only a week when the English mission arrived. Through van Braam, Washington begged leave to show his passport and commission and then tendered the letter from Governor Dinwiddie. St. Pierre declined to receive it at that time. Would Monsieur Washington retain the papers until the arrival from the next fort of Monsieur Repentigny, who had been sent for and was expected shortly?
The delay gave George time to examine the fort casually. He found it a stout frontier structure of four houses built as corner bastions with the space between them stockaded. Before he was able to study the armament, he was informed that the officer from Presque Isle had arrived. George again went to Headquarters, and after an introduction to Captain Repentigny, delivered the papers. St. Pierre took them and went into another room so that the Captain, without distraction, could turn the documents into French. When the translation of this was approved, Washington asked for an early answer; the commandant said he would call a council to consider the question. George retired to await a decision and, meantime, to get such information as he could of the fort and the minor matters covered by his instructions.
Had the young Virginian undertaken that night to analyze the information he and his men had acquired at Fort Le Boeuf, he would have found two items important. First, there did not appear to be the least doubt in the mind of the commandant that the French had a valid title to the Ohio and could hold that river and its tributaries. Second, the intruders were preparing to extend their occupation the next spring. On this point, George’s companions reported along the creek at Fort Le Boeuf fifty birch canoes and 170 of pine. Many others were being blocked out. These preparations convinced Washington that the French were making ready on a large scale for an early descent on the Ohio. Virginia must act quickly and in strength. Not one day must be lost in getting to Williamsburg the news of what the French were undertaking.
Equally apparent was the French aim to detach the Indians from their British alliance. The tactics employed to entice Half King at Venango were being repeated at Le Boeuf. The Chief was as anxious as ever to return the treaty belt, but, he said, the commandant would not give him an audience. St. Pierre was seeking to delay the Indians in the hope that George would leave without them. If that happened, the French knew precisely how to wean the natives from the English and win them with rum, presents and promises.
Perhaps it was a game in which all the odds were against George, but it was not a contest the young man would forfeit. His aim must be to procure an early answer, depart with the Indians and, after that, get to Williamsburg as soon as possible. In this spirit he flatly declined St. Pierre’s next proposal—that Washington proceed to Quebec and present to the Governor of Canada the communication from His Excellency of Virginia. His orders were to deliver the letter to the commander on the frontier the French had occupied. He had no authority to go farther or to place the paper in the hands of anyone else. From this stand he did not permit himself to be shaken. George would do his utmost to spur Half King to press for the council St. Pierre was trying to avoid. Immediately after Half King made his speech and returned the treaty belt, young Washington intended to start down the creek.
Washington got the horses off without difficulty, and then he urged Half King again to seek an interview with the commandant. Half King got St. Pierre to receive him late on December 14, but this was done privately and with only one or two other officers—virtual defeat in itself, because the Chief had wished the return of the treaty belt to be formal and public. St. Pierre had not been willing to accept it, even though de Marin previously had demanded it. St. Pierre had protested that he had great friendship for the Indians over whom Half King held sway. The French wished to trade with the tribes, the commandant had assured him, and, as proof of this, would send goods immediately to Logstown.
That evening George received the formal written answer to Governor Dinwiddie’s letter. Along with the paper was assurance that two canoes would be at Washington’s disposal the next morning. St. Pierre was as good as his word. Early on December 15, there was much activity on the part of the French in seeing that the emissary be made comfortable for his voyage down the creek, but at the same time every blandishment was offered the Indians to keep them from leaving with the Englishmen. In this critical affair, on which the continued support of the Six Nations might depend, the young Virginian instinctively relied on moral force. He went to Half King and, with all the strength of argument at his command, tried to prevail on the Chief to depart with him. For the first time in George’s dealings with Half King, the Indian palpably evaded: The commandant, he said, would not let him go until the next day. George walked forthwith to St. Pierre and squarely faced the old soldier: Would the commandant complete his business with Half King and permit the natives to leave? Ill treatment was being accorded an emissary, because to delay the Indians was to hamper his own departure.
The Indians were waiting because the French had promised they would receive the next morning a present of guns and the supplies they most loved. For the sake of a few rifles, the savages were delaying a return journey on which English control of the Ohio might depend. George quickly made up his mind that he also would remain. Then, if the French redeemed their promise, the savages would get the presents and still go with the Virginians; if the French delayed the gifts, then George could accuse them before the Indians of breaking promises.
The next morning St. Pierre and his lieutenants saw that Washington had the advantage. Without further chicanery the presents were given the Sachems with appropriate ceremony and fine words. Then the French played their last card: Liquor was offered the Redmen. George knew that if the savages took any of it, they soon would get drunk and neither would nor could attempt that day the difficult work of steering their canoe down the creek; so, once again, George appealed to the Indians. The party must start, and at once! Half King and this three companions looked at the jugs, and then, to Washington’s immense relief, they went about the final preparations for departure. Soon both canoes were ready. George gave the word. They were off, all hands. George had won.
George and his party reached Venango December 22. He made ready to start for Logstown the next day and sent for Half King in order to learn whether the Indians were going overland with the Englishmen or intended to continue by water. Half King explained that he would use the canoe for the rest of the journey. George no longer had to depend on Half King and could not wait indefinitely at Venango to protect the Chief against the cunning of Joincare, but he took pains to warn the Indians against Joincare. Half King was reassuring in answer: Washington need not be concerned; the Chief knew the French too well to be deceived by them. He had not yet satisfied himself concerning George’s abilities but he had a measure of affection for the tall Major and a certain belief in the future of the young white emissary. Half King already had given him an Indian name, Caunotau-carius, Towntaker. What this new brother of the Six Nations needed, the tribes would endeavor to supply.
George thanked the Chief and bade him farewell. The next day the white men set out from Venango for Murthering Town. Five miles only were covered before early twilight and the weariness of the animals forced Washington to call a halt. By the morning of December 26, three of the men were so badly frost-bitten that they could do nothing. George stood inflexibly to his resolution to get the answer of the French to Williamsburg without the loss of a day that could be saved. He proposed to Gist that they strike out on foot. The veteran frontiersman did all he could to dissuade the Virginian, but the Major was insistent. Although the two men followed the easiest trail that led towards Murthering Town, the pace was exhausting, the cold, in George’s own words, “scarcely supportable,” and the small streams so tightly frozen that it was difficult to get even drinking water. The guide was correct: this was not the life for a gentleman. At Murthering Town they found among the natives one who spoke English and professed to know Gist. It seemed good fortune that this fellow had been encountered, because George now was determined to leave the trail and make for the nearest crossing of the Allegheny. The Indian might be able to show them the shortest route. On inquiry, he said he could, and would do so gladly.
With this guide Washington and Gist set out. As the Indian carried George’s pack easily, in addition to his own rifle, they made good speed for eight or ten miles. Then the Major had to admit that his feet were getting very sore and that he was weary. It would be well, he said, if they camped. On this, the Indian offered to carry George’s gun as well as his pack, but George did not wish to part with his rifle or to give the strange Indian two. Refusal displeased the savage. He became churlish and insisted that the party press on because, he said, there were Ottawas in the woods. If the white men stopped and went to sleep, these Indians would attack and scalp them.
Gist had become suspicious by this time and had noticed that the man was proceeding too far to the northeast to reach the nearest crossing of the Allegheny. George had not received either a glance or a whisper from Gist to show that the frontiersman distrusted the Indian, but he himself was growing dubious. Soon, in the belief that the Indian was leading them astray, Washington told him that when they reached the next water, they would stop. If the native guide made any reply over his shoulder, George did not remember it afterward. He noticed only the back of the savage, less than fifteen paces ahead, and the wideness of a meadow spotted here and there with trees. The three had gone a little way into this meadow when George saw the Indian wheel, lift his rifle and fire straight at them.
“Are you shot?” George cried to Gist.
“No,” answered Gist, who had not seen the Indian fire.
As they looked, the man ran ahead a little way, got behind a big oak and started to reload his rifle. Almost instantly the two white men were upon him. Gist would have killed him without a word, but Washington restrained his companion. Silently and alertly, then, with the Indian in front of them, the travelers went on downgrade to a little run. There George called a halt and directed the savage to make a fire, while George either stood by the guns or saw that Gist was within instant reach of the weapons.
Presently Gist whispered: “As you will not have him killed, we must get him away and then we must travel all night.”
George agreed. Gist went about arranging things as if they were to camp there, and at length turned to the Indian. “I suppose,” said he, “you were lost and fired your gun.”
The bewildered savage answered only that he knew the way to his cabin and that it was nearby.
“Well,” Gist answered indulgently, “do you go home, and as we are much tired, we will follow your track in the morning; and here is a cake of bread for you, and you must give us meat in the morning.”
The native had thought he was going to be killed, and when he saw that he had a chance to get away alive, he was happy to depart without word, loot or scalps. Gist followed him some distance and listened to be sure the Indian continued to put many yards between him and the campfire. Not long after nine o’clock, Gist came back and told George they must move to another site. Weary as Washington was, he picked up his pack and tramped about a mile. Then Gist stopped again and lighted a fire so they could see to set their compass. This done, they fixed their course and started for the Allegheny. Although George had thought early in the day that he could not go any farther, new strength came with danger. In the knowledge that his trail could be followed rapidly in the snow, he was able to travel all night and all the next day.
On the twenty-ninth the two reached the shore of the Allegheny about two miles from Shannopin’s Town. One glance at the stream was enough to dishearten: Instead of the solid sheet across which he had expected to walk, George saw only about fifty yards of ice adjoining each of the banks. In midstream was angry, open water, down which broken ice was driving. A raft offered the only means of traversing that turbulent and forbidding stream, a raft that had to be built of standing timber, for felling which the pack included only one hatchet! An all-day job the two men had, but just after sundown the raft was complete. George and Gist shoved it to open water and got the rough platform into the stream. Before they could push halfway across they were in an ice jam that threatened to overwhelm the raft. It flashed over George, on the downstream side, that he might be able to stop the raft and let the ice run past. Quickly and with all his strength, he pushed his pole downward in about ten feet of water. Then he swung to it. On the instant, the force of the current threw the raft against the pole with so much violence that the top of the pole was dashed forward—with George hanging to it. He fell into the water and might have lost his life had not one of his long arms reached a log of the raft. He gripped it, pulled himself up, and, in freezing garments gave such help as he could to Gist in handling the raft. It was to no purpose. The two men could not push to either shore. At last, finding a little island in the river, they left the raft and got on the bit of ground. George was sheeted in ice; Gist had his fingers frost-bitten. The island was of all resting-places the bleakest and the coldest; but the two men were still alive and had their packs, their guns, their hatchet . . . and the dispatch to Dinwiddie.
Daylight brought an entrancing sight: from the shore of the little island to the bank, the river was frozen over stoutly enough to bear the weight of men with packs. George and Gist crossed without any trouble and, after a tramp of ten miles, entered the hospitable door of Frazier’s trading post.
The remaining days of the mission were tedious but not dangerous. At Gist’s new settlement, which he reached January 2, 1754, Washington bought a horse and saddle, so that Frazier’s might be sent back to him. Then George started for Wills Creek. It was speed, speed, speed to arouse Virginia for the prompt occupation of the country the French were preparing to seize. George was at Belvoir on January 11, but he did not feel he could linger when he had news for the Governor. He hurried to Williamsburg and, on January 16, 1754, placed the letter from St. Pierre in the hand of the official who anxiously had been awaiting his return.
The firm but noncommital answer and George’s description of conditions on the frontier so impressed Dinwiddie that he asked Washington to write a report that could be laid before Council the next day. This required George to throw together hastily the entries he had made almost daily in his journal. The product was a narrative of seven thousand words, loosely constructed and in some passages obscure; but it had interest and it contained much information at once accurate and apropos.
When George moved about Williamsburg he found himself and his mission the objects of much curiosity. He was applauded by the friends of the Governor and accused secretly by the enemies of His Honor and by rival speculators of magnifying the danger in order to get help for the Ohio Company. Washington’s immediate desire was to know what would be done to anticipate the advance of the French to the Ohio. Dinwiddie believed that success hung on speed. Unless the English hastened their march, the French would get to the Ohio first and would so strongly secure themselves that the might of England would be taxed to drive them away. As surely as with Washington on the way home, it was speed, all speed. Soon after George’s return, the Governor changed the date for the meeting of the prorogued Assembly from April 18 to February 14.
In advance of the session of the lawmakers, Dinwiddie felt he should provide an adequate guard for the protection of the men whom he already had dispatched to build a fort at the junction of the Monongahela and the Allegheny. Accordingly, on January 21, five days after his return, Major Washington, as Adjutant of the Northern Neck District, was authorized to enlist one hundred of the militia of Augusta and Frederick Counties; the Indian trader, Capt. William Trent, was directed to raise a like force among men of his own calling, whose property and livelihood were most threatened. The quota did not seem high. Of the three hundred English traders who went out yearly into the Indian country, a third should be expected to volunteer. By the time these two hundred men had reached the Ohio, four hundred to be requested of the General Assembly could be enlisted. If other Colonies then would send contingents, these combined forces, “with the conjunction of our friendly Indians,” Dinwiddie explained, “I hope will make a good impression on the Ohio and be able to defeat the designs of the French.”
George examined the instructions given him. He found that fifty of his men were to be supplied from the militia of Frederick by Lord Fairfax, County Lieutenant. James Patton, County Lieutenant of Augusta, was to furnish a similar number. By February 20 these two detachments were to be in Alexandria, where George was to train and discipline them. Many of the militiamen were expected to volunteer for service; but if volunteers did not suffice, the required total was to be reached through a draft by lot.
To speed the muster, George procured the Governor’s permission to send Jacob van Braam to assist the County Lieutenant of Augusta. George hurried to Frederick to act with Fairfax. He quickly uncovered that the militia, as the Governor phrased it, were in “very bad order.” George waited impatiently but helplessly until about February 11 and then, disillusioned, started back to Williamsburg with a letter in which Fairfax confessed that the draft was a failure. Like reports came from Augusta, though it had suffered during the previous summer from an Indian raid.
About the time George brought to Williamsburg the news from Frederick, the General Assembly met. On the opening day Dinwiddie delivered a message in which he summarized Major Washington’s report of the mission to Fort Le Boeuf. His Honor gave warning that 1500 French, with their Indian allies, were preparing to advance early in the spring, rendezvous at Logstown, and “build many more fortresses” on the Ohio. With a fervent description of the horrors of a frontier war, the Governor called on the Burgesses to vote a “proper supply.”
With this information in hand, the Burgesses began to review the Governor’s appeal for funds. There was no enthusiasm for an expedition to the Ohio. Some officials insisted that the report was “a fiction and a scheme to promote the interest of a private company”—the Ohio Company, of course. Debate was precipitated; dissent was vigorous. “With great application,” Dinwiddie subsequently reported, “many arguments and everything I possibly could suggest, the [Burgesses] at last voted £10,000 for protecting our frontiers.”
As soon as the £10,000 had been voted, Dinwiddie undertook to raise six companies of fifty men each and to dispatch these new soldiers to the contested river. To command the volunteers, officers had now to be commissioned by the Governor—a fact that immensely interested George; if new military service was to be offered and new honors won, Washington must have a share in them! Ambitious as George had become, he told himself in all candor that he did not have the age or the experience to justify him in aspiring immediately to the general command of the expedition to the Ohio; but he believed that if he could get a commission as Lieutenant Colonel under a qualified senior, he would not fail.
George went about the task of recruiting for the new force. His headquarters were in Alexandria, where he had close relations with John Carlyle. That gentleman, on January 26, had been appointed Commissary of Supply for the expedition to the Ohio. George had a good opinion of Carlyle and, after experience with him, concluded that the Commissary was altogether capable and most painstaking. At the time there was nothing in Carlyle’s record to indicate that he was a man too ready to accept promise as performance.
There was no enthusiasm for enlisting. After approximately a week of hard persuasion, George enlisted about twenty-five individuals, most of whom he described as “loose, idle persons,” devoid of shoes and almost every garment. Haplessly, there were no uniforms and no credit for buying any. A few recruits who were enlisted elsewhere drifted into Alexandria, but the upbuilding of the force to the stipulated strength of three hundred was slow, dangerously slow in the light of news that came from Trent on the Ohio. Trent repeated in a letter to Washington what friendly Indians had told him of great threats made by the French and urged that Washington hasten to him.
Dinwiddie, sifting all he knew, soon chose Joshua Fry as the man best qualified to command the expedition. Fry, a former professor of mathematics at William and Mary, an engineer and cartographer who had gone in 1745 to the new County of Albemarle in the Piedmont, had done no fighting but he knew men, won their respect easily, and displayed always a justice and serenity of spirit in dealing with them. George Muse was named Captain and soon was promoted Major. Of the appointment of a third officer, Capt. Adam Stephen, George probably heard also. The other commissions, as he ascertained gradually, went in most instances to ambitious young men who wished to learn something of the frontier.
Of his place in the organization, George had received some assurance before he knew who were and were not to be his companions-in-arms. By March 20 a messenger brought him a letter of instructions from the Governor and a note in which Richard Corbin said briefly: “I enclose your commission. God prosper you with it.” The commission was at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, the second in command of the expedition. Dinwiddie expressed surprise that the French were expected to move so early in the season to the Ohio. This, said he, “makes it necessary for you to march what soldiers you have immediately to the Ohio, and escort some wagons, with the necessary provisions.” Colonel Fry was to follow with the other troops as soon as possible. There was an opportunity! The Lieutenant Colonel was to command the vanguard on an advance to the river and meet whatever adventure awaited the Virginians there.
The speed of preparation increased at Alexandria. As George tried to make soldiers of his homeless and destitute volunteers, Carlyle sought to procure supplies and equipment. George decided to start with supplies sufficient only for the march to Winchester and get additional wagons and provisions there for the long journey to the Ohio. When his troops at Alexandria increased to 120, he organized them into two companies, one temporarily under van Braam and the other under Peter Hog, who had the Governor’s commission as Captain. With these two officers, five subalterns, two sergeants and six corporals, all probably inexperienced, George continued to give his men such drill and inculcate such discipline as they would take; but they still were raw recruits when, at the beginning of April their Lieutenant Colonel issued marching orders. On the morning of April 2 George led his little column out of Alexandria and westward in the direction of the “Blew Mountains.” This was the first time he ever had commanded troops on the road. A long and a strange road it was to prove, the road of a career he coveted but had not planned.
When Washington reached Winchester he found there the company raised in that area by Captain Stephen. He looked next for the transportation to carry to Wills Creek and on to the Ohio the supplies his men and horses must have if the expedition was to succeed. Virtually nothing had been done to assemble the needed vehicles. Dinwiddie had called Carlyle’s attention to the impressment law and had said that it must be invoked if wagons could not be hired at reasonable rates, but no official in Frederick had acted. Forty wagons George impressed, fifty, sixty—and received at his camp not one in seven of them. He waited for the arrival of others that had been requisitioned, and when they did not arrive, he impressed still more. When a week of fruitless impressment and argument had passed, George felt he no longer could wait, because all indications had been that the French would start early for the Ohio. About April 18, Washington and 159 men started westward across the mountain.
Towards western country George rode over North Mountain and then northward down the right bank of the Cacapon. He had crossed this river when he met a man who rode rapidly towards him with an express. This horseman brought from Trent a number of letters that Washington read eagerly. They were an appeal for reenforcement at the forks of the Ohio with all possible speed: Eight hundred French troops were approaching, Trent wrote; he was expecting attack at any hour.
More trouble awaited George at Wills Creek. When he inquired for the pack animals to be used for a swift, light march westward, he found that Trent had failed to redeem the promise to collect the horses. Not one was there. Lack of transport might doom the expedition. Amid George’s first grim reflections on this paralysis came the blackest news of all: Ensign Edward Ward who had been in immediate command at the mouth of the Monongahela rode up to Wills Creek on the twenty-second and reported that the fort had been captured. The French had won control of the forks of the Ohio. George had lost the race almost before it had begun.
Ensign Ward had a humiliating story to tell—the forks of the Ohio lost, a French force estimated at more than one thousand men there to defy the 159 under Washington, the Indians clamoring for reenforcements, of whom only a few weak companies were within marching distance. Short of the defection of the Six Nations and the destruction of the little force at Wills Creek, the situation was about as bad as it could be, but it did not appall the young commander. He felt, instead, what he termed a “glowing zeal.” George’s mind and military inexperience would not yield to odds or circumstance. The Indians needed help and asked it in a spirit of loyalty that made George doubly anxious to extend it. Besides, to withhold aid would be to lose the savages’ support. Even with the insignificant force he had, George felt that he must advance as far as he could and must hold a position from which the column, when reenforced, would proceed to the forks, recover the fort and drive the French away.
When the young Virginian had reached this conclusion, his knowledge of the country shaped his action. The best station at which to hold his detachment until reenforcements arrived in sufficient number to justify an offensive was, he thought, a place he had not visited, the junction of Red Stone Creek with the Monongahela, thirty-seven miles above the forks. From that point it would be possible to send the artillery and the heavy supplies by water to the mouth of the river. In order to reach Red Stone Creek with the heavy guns and the wagons it would be necessary to widen the trail into a road, but this could be done with the men George had.
Progress was hideously slow. Everywhere the trail had to be widened and repaired. Effort availed scarcely at all. Never was the column able to advance more than four miles a day. When conditions were at their worst, night found the wagons no farther than two miles from their starting point. One English trader after another would arrive at camp from the west with his skins and his goods and explain that he was fleeing from the French and tell of the strength of the force that had come down from Lake Erie. Some merely repeated rumor; but one of them, Robert Callender, reached Washington’s detachment with information of a nearer potential enemy: At Gist’s new settlement, Callender had encountered a party of five French under Commissary La Force. The number was trifling; their proximity was suspicious. Ostensibly, they were searching for deserters; but actually, in Callender’s opinion, they were reconnoitring and studying the country.
That news was enough to give a faster beat to any young officer’s heart, especially when Callender brought word that Half King was marching with fifty men to join the English detachment. George determined to send out twenty-five men under Captain Stephen on May 11 to reconnoitre and to meet Half King.
There followed a week of discouraging reports, brightened by dispatches from Williamsburg. An express brought letters in which George was informed that Colonel Fry had reached Winchester with more than 100 men and soon would march to join the advanced contingent. Other troops were coming, too. North Carolina was to send 350 men; Maryland was to supply 200; although Pennsylvania would furnish no soldiers, she would contribute £10,000; from New England, Gov. William Shirley was to march 600 troops to harass the French in Canada. George had not yet learned how readily hopes and half-promises might be accepted as assurances and guarantees. He took all the reports at face value and rejoiced, in particular, over the prospect of a demonstration against Canada.
Ensign Ward, whom Washington had sent on to Williamsburg, came back to camp on the seventeenth with a letter from Dinwiddie. The Governor told of the arrival in Virginia of an Independent Company from South Carolina and of the expectation that the two similar companies from New York would reach Virginia waters within about ten days. He wrote that Council approved of George’s caution in planning to halt at Red Stone Creek until reenforcements arrived. Somewhat deliberately in this same letter, George and the other Virginia officers were admonished not to let “some punctillios about command” interfere with the expedition.
Ward probably supplemented this with news that a committee controlling pay of the officers and men had limited to £1 6s. the allowance for enlisting each soldier, and Council had not raised the scale of compensation of officers or added to the ration previously allowed, which merely was that of the private soldier. This had been a sore subject with the officers. Now they soon would be serving with Captains, lieutenants and ensigns of Independent Companies who would be receiving higher pay. This prospect combined with hard work, wet weather and poor fare to produce near-mutiny among the Virginia officers. Under the chairmanship of Stephen, they drafted a formal protest to the Governor, and, reviewing their hardships, concluded with at least a threat of resignation en masse. This document they signed and brought to George for transmission. George felt the sting of poor pay as sharply as they did, but resignation was a different matter. Although he would not fail to stand his ground against discrimination, he wished to do this in a manner that would not jeopardize his continuance as Lieutenant Colonel.
Reflection suggested a means of achieving both ends. On May 18 George wrote the Governor a letter that was at once boyish, wrathful and shrewd. He confessed his sympathy with the protest and went on to explain that the officers would have resigned their commissions had they not felt themselves obligated by the nearness of danger to remain on duty. Then he deliberately began a new paragraph to distinguish their intentions from his own: “Giving up my commission is quite contrary to my intention. Nay, I ask it as a greater favor, than any amongst the many I have received from your Honor, to confirm it to me. But let me serve voluntarily; then I will, with the greatest pleasure in life, devote my services to the expedition without any other reward than the satisfaction of serving my country; but to be slaving dangerously for the shadow of pay, through woods, rocks, mountains—I would rather prefer the great toil of a day laborer, and dig for a maintenance, provided I were reduced to the necessity, than serve upon such ignoble terms. . . . Be the consequence what it will, I am determined not to leave the Regiment, but to be amongst the last men that quit the Ohio, even if I serve as a private volunteer, which I greatly prefer to the establishment we are now upon.”
Ward brought, also, a message from Dinwiddie to Half King, whom the Governor was anxious to have with him at the conference soon to be held in Winchester. George did not forward the message itself. He reasoned that Half King and the other Chiefs, possessing full measure of curiosity, would proceed more quickly if informed that a speech from the Governor was at the headquarters of the English. Speed seemed imperative, in spite of high water, because two friendly Indians who came to camp now reported that Frenchmen on reconnaissance had been within six or seven miles of the English. George continued to hope he would be able to bag some French. To do this he would need the assistance of Half King, and he consequently took much pains with the “speech” of invitation to the Chiefs.
On the twenty-third Stephen had a strange report to make. The Captain and his men had reached the Monongahela not far from Red Stone Creek, and there they had met Indian traders whom the French had permitted to return towards the English settlements. All that these men could tell Stephen was that some French soldiers under a young officer styled Jumonville had been reconnoitring along the Monongahela, but had gone back the previous day to the fort at the forks of the Ohio, Fort DuQuesne as it now was styled.
The next day some small information of a reliable character began to arrive from the country ahead. The Indian previously sent to Half King returned with a companion who had a message from the Sachem. This was a clear warning and a definite encouragement. The French in undetermined number were advancing to fight; Half King was coming to counsel. Later in the day, after the column had reached the Great Meadows between Laurel Hill and Chestnut Ridge, an Indian trader reported that he had seen two Frenchmen the previous day. He was certain that a strong hostile detachment was on the march. This information appealed to George as accurate and as calling for immediate defensive preparation. He sought out favorable ground in the Meadows and at length found two gulleys that were close together and, to his inexperienced eye, adequate as natural trenches. These he promptly manned and then he placed his wagons between them.
The morning of May 27 brought the most explicit information George had received of the movements of the French. Gist rode into camp and described how the previous noon La Force and fifty soldiers had come to his new settlement, which he had left in the charge of two Indians. The French were in hostile mood; Gist hurried off to warn Washington. En route, about five miles from camp, Gist found the tracks of numerous white men whom he took to be those who had been at his place on the twenty-sixth. The canoes of this advance party, Gist had learned, were at Red Stone Creek. If the Frenchmen were far from their landing place, and close to his camp, George thought he had an excellent chance of cutting them off.
Night was bringing the blackest of darkness when, about 9 P.M., an Indian runner subsequently known as Silverheels came to the camp with stirring news from Half King. The Chief sent word that he was about six miles away and that he had seen footprints of two Frenchmen who had crossed the trail. Half King believed these men belonged to the party who had passed Gist’s. All of them, the Chief thought, were nearby.
George resolved immediately to join Half King and attack the French. Although he had scarcely more than eighty men, he called up forty of them and, within an hour, started for the bivouac of the friendly natives. Day was breaking when the guide stopped at the crude shelter of Half King. The inevitable council was brief. Half King and the others agreed to make common cause and join the English in attacking the enemy. Quickly the Virginians and the natives went to the spot where the footprints of the Frenchmen had been seen. Then Half King told two of his Indians to follow the trail and ascertain where the French were encamped.
At length the two Indian scouts returned: They had found their quarry! About half a mile from the trail, in a bower well concealed among rocks, was a body of French troops. The situation was ideal. By proceeding carefully, George’s men could surround the French and attack on all sides.
Between 7 and 8 A.M. deployment was completed. The Virginians and Indians crept nearer until they were within a little more than a hundred yards of the unsuspecting French. George waited until he was sure everything was in order. Then he stepped forward and gave his command. Almost on the instant his tall figure was under the eyes of Frenchmen. As fast as they could, these soldiers ran back to their bower to get their rifles. A moment later, shots rang out. Men began to fall. George heard the whistle of passing bullets as they cut the air and somehow felt exhilarated. Stephen closed in with his platoon and captured an officer. Some of the French gave ground, made off, and then, at a shout from their commander, came running back with uplifted hands. These men had seen the Indians in their rear and, knowing what their fate would be at the hands of the savages, preferred to surrender to the British. Behind them came half a dozen Indians who fell upon the wounded, brained and scalped them.
By this time firing had ceased. All the twenty-one unwounded French survivors had thrown down their weapons. On the ground were ten dead and one wounded man who had escaped the hatchet of the Indians. One French soldier, Mouceau by name, had been seen to make off. An Englishman was dead. The wounded on Washington’s side numbered only two or three. From first shot to last surrender, not quite fifteen minutes had elapsed. The surprise had been complete; George’s first skirmish had achieved the ideal of the soldier, the destruction of the adversary as a fighting force. The commander of the French part, Joseph Coulon, Sieur de Jumonville, had been killed by Half King, or at least the Chief so boasted. Jumonville’s second in command, Druillon, and two cadets were among the captured; but the most valuable of the prisoners was La Force, whom Washington described as “a bold, enterprising man and a person of great subtlety and cunning.”
Washington started the prisoners and his men back to the camp in the Meadows. On the way, the captured French officers began to protest that they had come as an embassy to serve notice on the English to leave the domain of the French King. They insisted they should be treated as attendants of an ambassador, not as prisoners of war, and should be returned with an escort to Fort DuQuesne, precisely as the French had treated Washington the previous winter.
Washington’s officers argued, if the French were an embassy, why were they so numerous and why so careful to hide themselves? Why did they not come boldly out and declare their presence and their mission? There was evidence that the French had been two miles closer to the camp than when they were discovered and that they had moved back and had sent off runners to report to Claude Pierre Pécaudy, Sieur de Contrecæur, the strength and position of Washington’s party. Behind this reasoning was conviction that the French seizure of the fort at the forks had been an act of war. In the minds of Washington and the other Englishmen, the French already were the enemy. Half King was wholly of this view. The French, he said, never intended to come otherwise than in hostility: if the English were fools enough to let them go, he never would assist in taking another Frenchman.
George announced no decision after this discussion of the twenty-eighth. The next morning the French formally asked him in what manner he regarded them. They were prisoners, said George; they were to march under guard to Winchester, where Dinwiddie was assumed to be. In a letter written later that day George cautioned His Honor against listening to the “smooth stories” of the Frenchmen concerning their alleged embassy. . . In strict justice,” he said, “they ought to be hanged as spies of the worst sort. . .”
Not for an instant did Lieutenant Colonel Washington permit the protests of the French prisoners to divert him from two other matters of much concern—his answer to the Governor on the sore question of pay, and his preparations to meet the attack he expected in retaliation for the defeat of Jumonville’s party.
The Governor’s reply to the protest George had forwarded was a sharp letter written from Winchester May 25 in which Dinwiddie took up the complaints of Captain Stephen and the other officers. Where the Governor thought the complaint justified, he promised such correction as he could make; where he believed the officers wrong, he said so, and reminded them that other applicants for commission “were desirous to serve on those conditions.” The Governor gave the commander a verbal spanking, professed his understanding of George’s difficulties and assured the young man that merit would not “pass unnoticed.” The letter disturbed George. It touched his pride and his pocket, concerning both of which he was sensitive, and it raised, vaguely, the question of his continuance in command. On the day after the fight with Jumonville, he sat down and wrote Dinwiddie an answer that displayed his youth and his ambition. He argued the issues in detail, and not unskillfully, and promised to do what he could “to reconcile matters”; but he could not forbear stating how he figured he was receiving almost ten shillings less per day than an officer of like rank on the regular establishment would receive, to say nothing of the fact that he had no prospect of half-pay on retirement. As he did not consider his circumstances permitted, he would not insist on serving without pay and would continue to accept the per diem of 12 s. 6d. Not until he made this completely, indeed tediously, plain, did he even announce to the Governor the victory he had won.
The effect of that success on his state of mind was what might have been expected in the case of an inexperienced but intelligent soldier: It increased his self-confidence and created an unwarranted contempt for the enemy at the same time that it admonished him to prepare against an attack by a force numerically much superior to his own. He began on May 30 to strengthen the ground where he had found the “natural entrenchments” between which he had placed his wagons. The French did not approach, but the fort was not finished in reasonably defensible form until June 3 and then was by no means as strong as its young engineer believed. The English escort brought in, on June 2, eighty or more Indians, but that total included women and children.
Badly as George needed more men, the arrival of the squaws and the children along with the warriors gave new seriousness to a condition that had troubled him for several days: Food had become scarce; flour, in particular, was almost exhausted. Every issue lowered the supply until, on June 6, the sergeant came to the bottom of the last sack.
In the wretched crisis this shortage of food presented him, George had new responsibility placed on his shoulders: Gist, on the very day of the exhaustion of the flour, brought news that Fry was dead. The Colonel had sustained a fall from his horse, several days prior to May 29, and had succumbed on May 31. As a result, George now had the chief command of the expedition, the post to which he had not dared aspire a few months previously.
As if to exemplify his extension of command, George received on June 9 the first reenforcements, aside from Indians, that had joined him after he had left Wills Creek. These were the remaining three companies of the Virginia Regiment under Capts. Robert Stobo and Andrew Lewis and Lieut. George Mercer, who had been advanced slowly by their temporary commander, Maj. George Muse. In the charge of Stobo, Lewis and Mercer were approximately 181 soldiers, few of whom had ever fired a rifle at any other target than game. These men brought scant supplies, but with the convoy there arrived nine small guns and the swivels on which to place them so that they could be fired horizontally in any direction. These were the first swivel guns George had received and they were to be the principal armament of the little stockade.
More interesting than anything else Major Muse brought with him was an emissary and interpreter, Andrew Montour, who spoke good French and English, as well as several Indian tongues. Along with Montour and the English reenforcements, or on their heels, George received three letters from Dinwiddie. In one written after receipt of the news of the death of Fry, the Governor informed George that he was to take Fry’s place with the rank of Colonel. Muse was to be Lieutenant Colonel; the senior Captain, Stephen, was to be made Major. The executive went on to say that Col. James Innes, “an old, experienced officer,” was expected daily and “is appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the forces, which I am very sensible will be very agreeable to you and the other officers.”
Dinwiddie already had written George that the Independent Companies were on their way to the fort, and now renewed his admonition that controversy with the commanders of these troops be shunned. The coming of the Independent Companies most certainly would raise the vexatious issue of rank and command. George was a Virginia Colonel; the officer in charge of the nearest Independent Company was James Mackay, a Captain by royal commission. Was rank so to be disregarded that the Captain would command the Colonel, or—what was more probable—would the Captain be exempt from the orders of a man three grades his senior? George asked himself the question in manifest disturbance of spirit. “Your Honor may depend I shall myself and will endeavor to make all my officers show Captain Mackay all the respect due to his rank and merit; but [I] should have been particularly obliged if your Honor had declared whether he was under my command or independent of it; however, I shall be studious to avoid all disputes that may tend to the public prejudice, but as far as I am able, I will inculcate harmony and unanimity.”
Righteous resolution and correspondence alike were interrupted that June 10 by reports of the approach of a party of French. George at once sent out Indian scouts and made ready to receive the enemy, but no French appeared and no fire was opened. The next day, Washington pushed out another detachment to find the foe. Two of these scouts returned on the twelfth with news that they had seen a small number of French in the woods.
On about June 14, Captain Mackay arrived with the Independent Company from South Carolina. George was at a loss how to act or what to do concerning the use of the company, but he was determined to receive Mackay as a gentleman and a comrade. When, therefore, he saw Mackay ride up, he greeted him in friendly manner and gave him no orders. Mackay picked his own campsite; George did not go to the company or inspect it. The first test came when Washington, as commander, sent the Captain the parole and countersign. Mackay replied that he did not think he should receive these from the Colonial Colonel. Mackay insisted that his command was a separate force and maintained that the Governor could not issue a commission that would command him. Another complication arose over the duty the Independent Company was to perform. The Colonials were working on the road to Red Stone. Would Mackay have his troops share in this labor? No—that was to say, not unless Colonel Washington was prepared to allow the men the regular pay of one shilling sterling per day for such special service. George, it will be remembered, was allotted eight pence daily for his own soldiers; he could not give more to those of the Independent Company.
At first, George did not know what to do when he came to this impasse. He wished that Mackay were somewhere else. As the Virginia Colonel could not detach the Independent Company, he concluded that he would himself leave: He would take his own men and their part of the remaining provisions, and would start for Red Stone Creek; Mackay could remain at the Meadows with the Independent Company. George assembled his troops on the morning of June 16 and prepared to start for Red Stone Creek. By persistence and in spite of many obstacles, he reached Gist’s new settlement and from that point sent back all except two of his wagons and teams to haul provisions.
The Colonel now had to return to a diplomatic role. George had heard that the Delawares and the Shawnees had taken up the hatchet against the English. Doubtless on the advice of Half King, the commander had sent messengers and wampum to those tribes and had invited them to a council at Gist’s. Washington felt better equipped now for negotiations with the savages because he had as his counsellors not only Montour and Half King but also the trader, Indian diplomatist and interpreter, George Croghan.
The Delawares and several Shawnee emissaries came promptly, but before Washington could employ Croghan’s arts on these Indians, there arrived from Logstown eight Mingoes who seemed curiously in a hurry. They asked to see Washington without delay and told him they had a commission that required an immediate council. Surprised by this haste, the Colonel brought some of his advisers together and let the Mingoes explain themselves. They went on with so many expostulations in discussing the French that George and his companions became suspicious: These Mingoes might be spies! Because of this possibility, George proceeded to act with appropriate caution and told the Mingoes that he could not receive their speech until Half King could be present. Delaware spokesmen similarly were asked to wait until that friend of the English could sit with the white men.
After Half King reached the camp, the English and about forty Indians opened a council. It lasted three days and, in the slow preparation and translation of long speeches, must have been exceedingly tedious. The substance of the speeches George made the Indians was that he and his men had come to fight by the side of the Six Nations and the Delawares, who were invited to send their women and children to safety in the English settlements. All other Indians of the Ohio were put on notice to choose between French and English and take the consequences.
The council, terminating June 21, was held under the eyes of the eight Mingoes, whose behavior confirmed the suspicion that they were spying on the force and were spreading false information concerning the strength of the French. To verify or disprove the statements of the Mingoes regarding the dispositions of the enemy, Washington sent out friendly natives as counter-spies. “I left off working any further on the road,” George explained later, “and told [the Mingoes] that as we intended to continue it through the woods as far as the fort, felling trees, etc., that we were waiting here for the reenforcements which were coming to us. . . . But as soon as they were gone, I set about making out and clearing a road to Red Stone.”
In spite of this deception of the enemy and the encouragement of friends, George discovered promptly that the council had been a failure. The Delawares could not be induced to go to the camp in the Meadows with their families. The Shawnees silently vanished. These were not the only disappointments. When the council was over, Half King and all his people started back to camp. As a consequence of this defection, George had to use his own inexperienced men as scouts to prevent surprise by the French.
This failure shook the faith of Washington in Montour and Croghan, who never were able to bring into camp more than thirty Indians, and not more than half of the thirty serviceable. Deeper than this reason for the Indians’ reluctance to fight was the meagreness of the presents George could offer. More Indian goods were coming but they had not arrived when most needed. Still another reason why the Indians had begun to hold back was their belief, not openly voiced, as yet, that the forces of the English were inferior to those of the French. The zeal of the Indians was dampened, further, by the shortage of provisions. All the flour and bacon of the advanced party had been consumed by June 23; nothing was left but a few steers, the milch cows and their calves. Until more provisions arrived, the English and their Indian guests would have to subsist on a little parched corn and on unsalted fresh meat.
George did not hesitate in the face of that contingency. He steeled himself to carry through what he had undertaken. He reasoned that the French either would come up the Monongahela and thence up Red Stone Creek or would follow the trail from Fort DuQuesne to Gist’s settlement. It appeared that the best attainable result was to be had by dispatching Captain Lewis with a few officers and sixty men to clear a road to the mouth of Red Stone Creek. The remaining troops must stay at Gist’s. Mackay and the Independent Company, presumably, still were at Great Meadows.
That night or the next morning, June 28, there arrived a message from Monakatoocha, a most startling message: The Chief had been at Fort DuQuesne two days previously, had witnessed the arrival of reenforcements there, and had heard the French say they were going to march forward and attack the English with eight hundred white troops and four hundred Indians. In Washington’s judgment, the fact that this report came from so experienced and trustworthy a man as Monakatoocha gave it credibility. An early attack by a greatly superior force was altogether probable, almost certain. He immediately sought the counsel of the few officers with him. Common judgment was that the scattered parts of the little force, Mackay’s Independent Company, Lewis’s detachment and Washington’s own contingent, should be united as soon as possible at Gist’s.
Captain Mackay understood the plight of his Colonial comrade and, as became a good soldier, hurried forward with his troops. Lewis, too, pressed his detachment and, by the forenoon of the twenty-ninth, was at Gist’s. In spite of this successful reunion of the scattered forces, the Indian allies became more and more alarmed. Some of them had scouted around Fort DuQuesne; some had heard exaggerated stories of the overwhelming strength of the French. All the natives soon gave warning that they would leave the English unless Colonel Washington returned to the fort in the Great Meadows.
The fort at Great Meadows would be more accessible to supplies. In addition, it should not be difficult there to get an early report of a French advance, whereas, at Gist’s, there always was the possibility that the French would slip eastward from Red Stone and lie in wait across the English line of supply. In favor of the strategy that would avoid this possibility there was, finally, the insistence of Indians on a withdrawal. Loss of the Indian scouts might be fatal in that difficult country. These considerations led George and his brother officers to decide unanimously that the column should retreat forthwith to Great Meadows. It was not an easy task. Besides the mountainous character of the country and the badness of the road, George had once more to contend with the lack of transport that had cramped and cursed the expedition from the day it reached Winchester. Only two teams, a few horses and the officers’ mounts remained with the troops. These animals and the men themselves were all the resources George had for moving the nine swivels, the ammunition and the baggage. The soldiers must draw the swivels; the ammunition and as many as possible of the other articles must be carried in the wagons and on the pack horses.
The retreat commenced—an ordeal that men endured only because the alternative was death in the woods from the bullet or war hatchet of an Indian. There was nothing to eat except parched corn and lean beef slaughtered, cooked and swallowed in the same hour. Every grade was a despair, every furlong a torture. The worst was the attitude of the men of Mackay’s Independent Company. They refused to help in getting the ammunition ready for transportation and, once the march began, would not lend a hand in dragging the swivels or removing obstacles from the road. These, said the regulars, were not the duties of soldiers, and could not be required of them.
It was the first of July when the exhausted men pulled the swivels into their feeble fort in the Great Meadows. The fort must be strengthened so that it would be safe until an enlarged force was able to take the offensive against the French. Tired as were the men, those who had the mettle and the muscle must clear a longer field of fire, fell trees, work on the stockade or dig trenches outside. The position did not now appear to be the “charming field for an encounter” that Washington had thought it when he first had sheltered his wagons behind “natural entrenchments.” It was possible, George quickly perceived, to carry his crude trench beyond a small branch, so that his men could be sure of getting water. Moreover, as part of the ground around the fort was so marshy that a direct assault by infantry probably could be made from one direction only, the south, it might be possible, also, to complete the little stockade in the middle of the entrenchments and to secure there the powder and provisions. This was the measure of advantage. For the rest, the fort was in a damp “bottom”; woods came within easy musket range of it; high ground surrounded it. Time did not permit the selection of a stronger, more defensible site. The best had to be made of a weak position. George gave it the name of Fort Necessity. Its effective total of fighting men was 284.
About daybreak on July 3, a single shot rang out. The troops were ordered to get under arms. Sleepy soldiers scarcely had made ready for action when a steady rain began to fall. For five hours, the unsheltered men had rain, rain, rain. In preparation for the enemy’s arrival, George could do almost nothing except to urge the men to keep their powder dry. Mud was deep inside the fort; water was rising in the trenches. About eleven o’clock, an alert sentinel caught a glimpse of armed men and sounded a new alarm by firing his musket. It was a challenge the French accepted. George saw them emerge from cover and move forward in three columns. The shout of the white men and the wild yell of the Indians told the garrison to expect the utmost in soldierly skill and the worst in savage cruelty. George met valor with vigor. He moved his troops into the open and formed them to repel a charge. When the French halted and opened fire at approximately six hundred yards, there was no wavering by the English and, fortunately, no loss. George did not let the men return the fire at that distance.
Now the French began to advance as if they intended to press their attack home. At the word of command, the English slipped back immediately into their trenches, which were deeper than ever in water. From the low parapet of these defences, the Virginians and the regulars prepared for a volley that would repulse the onslaught, but the charging soldiers dropped to the ground, scattered and almost disappeared. “They then,” wrote Washington, “from every little rising, tree, stump, stone and bush kept up a constant, galling fire upon us. . . .” He saw, too, that it was not directed against his men only. The French deliberately shot every horse, every cow and even the dogs in the camp, until, while the engagement still was young, the English realized they had lost already their transport and their meat.
The Virginians and Carolinians felt sure they killed many a Frenchman and kept the others from pressing closer, but they themselves now were losing steadily and were having more and more difficulty in keeping their weapons and their cartridges dry enough to use. The unequal fight continued into the late afternoon and rose in the fury of fire until the rain filled the trenches, got into the men’s cartridge-boxes, wet their firelocks and reached even the powder that had been placed carefully in what was thought to be the driest spot inside the stockade. The fire fell off.
About eight o’clock, there came a cry from the French, “Voulez-vous parler?” No. There was a wait and then another shouted question from beyond the trenches: Would the commander send out an officer to receive a proposal, an officer who could speak French? The messenger would be permitted to return unhurt.
Washington, heavy-hearted, but convinced of his duty, called two French-speaking officers, van Braam and William La Peyroney, and sent them out between the lines to ascertain what the French proposed. They soon brought back assurance that the French were willing to permit the English to return to Virginia without becoming prisoners of war. Probably because of the vagueness of these terms, Washington rejected them and instructed his representatives to return for further parley. La Peyroney either had been wounded earlier in the day and collapsed about this time, or else he received a shot that dropped him now. Van Braam was left as the one French-speaking officer to carry on the negotiations. The Dutchman left the entrenchments and returned, after a time, with a folded sheet. On the first page were the badly penned opening paragraphs of a Capitulation, in French, accorded by Coulon de Villiers, commanding the troops of His Most Christian Majesty, to the English troops dans le fort De Necessité. As best van Braam might, he undertook to translate the difficult handwriting. In the Dutchman’s own poor English the document set forth that it never had been the intention of the French to disturb the peace and bonne harmonie that subsisted between the two princes, “but only to avenge . . .”
There van Braam came to a word over which he probably hesitated as at least one other translator did subsequently. It may have looked as if it were l’assailir, which did not make sense. Van Braam finally translated it as “death,” or “loss” or “killing”—there later was some doubt which word he used. The text then went on ”qui a été fait sur un de nos officiers,” which of course was easy. Washington and others believed the language meant that the French said they sought to avenge the death of one of their officers, who, of course, was Jumonville.
At the moment, less thought was given to this than to the specific terms. First, the English commander could retire with his entire garrison to his own country. No insult would be offered by the French, who would do all they could to restrain their Indians. Second, the English could carry with them all their belongings except their artillery and “munitions of war,” which the French “reserved” to themselves. Third, the defenders of the fort would receive the honors of war and could march out of the entrenchments with drum beating and with one small cannon. Fourth, as soon as the terms were signed, the English were to strike their colors. Fifth, at daybreak, a detachment of French would see the English marched off and the French left in possession of the fort. Sixth, as the English had no horses or cattle with which to remove their effects, they could put these en cache until they could send draft animals for them; and to this end they could leave a guard, on condition that they should not work on any establishment in that vicinity or on that side of the mountains for one year. Finally, as the English held prisoners taken at the—again that word van Braam translated “loss” or “death” or “killing” of Jumonville—they must liberate and deliver these men, under escort, at Fort DuQuesne. As surety for this and for the general agreement two Captains were to be left as hostages until the arrival of the French and Canadian prisoners. The victors offered to provide a guard for these hostages, who promised return of the French prisoners in two and a half months at latest.
The main provisions were honorable. George balked at one stipulation only: the English ought not to be compelled to surrender their “munitions of war,” because that phrase would include ammunition. If the troops started back without powder and ball, every man of them might be killed and scalped by the Indians. Van Braam must return to the French and insist on the elimination of that phrase.
Back once more went the Captain. He soon returned: The French had been reasonable. From the capitulation the words et munitions de guerre had been stricken by a penstroke. There remained the question of hostages. Who of the Captains should be delivered to the French? Van Braam and Stobo, young, unmarried and unattached, were the most available hostages. The French commander was so informed. George signed the capitulation in a hand that showed neither excitement nor exhaustion. Mackay, too, attached his name because he would not recognize the authority of a Colonial to act for his troops. It was then about midnight of July 3.
Destruction of belongings took some hours. It was close to ten o’clock on July 4 when the survivors marched out of the fort. They stepped to beat of drum; their colors were flying; they carried their arms; they received the honors of war; but they could not keep the Indians from plundering what they left behind or anything they did not guard vigilantly while they carried it with them.
When the survivors of Fort Necessity were counted at the bivouac the next morning they numbered 293 officers and men. By the time it reached Wills Creek on July 8 or 9, the Virginia Regiment had been reduced by death, wounds, detachment, lameness and desertion to 165 rank and file. Total killed finally were counted at thirty and the wounded at seventy for the entire force, which, at the beginning of the expedition, had consisted of about four hundred of all ranks.
George and most of his officers soon recovered from the physical strains of the battle and the retreat, but the surviving private soldiers of the Virginia Regiment less quickly responded to rest and full rations. This exhaustion could lead to demoralization, but, in retrospect, there had been little in the conduct of the men that should shame them or their Colonel. Cowardice there doubtless had been, but the only notorious display of lack of mettle had been by an officer. Lieutenant Colonel Muse had shown himself unable to endure the dangers of combat. Speedy resignation was acceptable.
This was individual humiliation. General distress was created in the command when some officer with a reading knowledge of French scrutinized the text of the capitulation. The word that van Braam had translated “loss” or “death” or “killing” proved to be in one place I’assassin and in the other I’assassinat. For the first time it was plain to the English officers that they unwittingly had made an acknowledgment that they had assassinated Jumonville. George, Mackay and Stephen were willing to swear that van Braam had not once used the word “assassination” in translating the paper; but there the word was. In their wrath, they suspected the worst and denounced van Braam as treacherous.
Their indignation would have burnt even more deeply had they realized with what satisfaction the French regarded the entire operation against Fort Necessity. De Villiers, one of six brothers of Jumonville, was furiously anxious to avenge his brother’s death and was in command. The fight, according to de Villiers, had cost him two killed and seventeen wounded. When de Villiers’ comment appeared in print, it was not lacking in self-praise or in derogation of his adversaries: “We made them consent to sign that they had assassinated my brother in his camp; we had hostages for the security of the French who were in their power; we made them abandon the King’s country; we obliged them to leave their cannon, nine pieces; we destroyed their horses and cattle and made them sign that the favors granted were evidence that we wanted to use them as friends.”
Dinwiddie was balanced in his criticism and was relieved, in a sense, that the disaster had not been worse. When the Governor learned of the defeat, he soon persuaded himself that he explicitly had ordered George not to attack until “the whole forces were joined in a body.” Although he blamed George to this extent, Dinwiddie adhered to his belief that larger responsibility rested on the other Colonies and, among Virginians, first on those who, having contracted to deliver flour promptly, had failed to do so. Croghan was as much condemned at Alexandria and in Williamsburg as he had been at Fort Necessity. Criticism was not limited to the Colonies in general, to Washington, to Croghan and to other traders who did not meet their contracts for provisions or transport. Gradually, after George came back to the settlements, he learned how and why the Governor had been disappointed, most of all, in the failure of the North Carolina contingent and of the two New York Independent Companies to reach Great Meadows.
Col. James Innes had been told by Governor Dinwiddie as early as March 23 that the position of Commander-in-Chief of the expedition to the Ohio had been intended for him. Delay had attended the organization of the North Carolina troops whom Innes was to bring to Virginia, but the Colonel himself had proceeded to Winchester. He had arrived in the Valley town on June 30 and had begun to exercise command under orders and commission of Dinwiddie. As Innes held also an old commission as Captain in the regular establishment, he seemed well chosen. He could give orders to the young Captains of Independent Companies and thereby could escape the disputes over rank that George had encountered. Because their Colony had no magazine, Innes’s men had no arms except those that private individuals chose to bring along with them. Two of his five North Carolina companies had disembarked at Alexandria late in June, but they found no weapons there. The other reenforcements on which Dinwiddie had relied for months were the two Independent Companies from New York. These troops had received in March orders to move to Virginia, but they had not reached Norfolk until June 16 and then proved to be poor human material, feebly equipped.
When blame for the capitulation at Fort Necessity was apportioned, Dinwiddie and Washington and all their friends could point to the number of idle troops: of the eight companies, approximately 550 men, who had been expected to support the Virginia Regiment, only Mackay’s company had joined Washington. The delay of the regulars and of the North Carolinians, the Governor told some of his correspondents, had been “monstrous.” Dinwiddie did not once suggest that, as conditions were, the more men Washington had, the sooner they would have gone hungry. The Governor never seemed to appreciate the part that feeble transportation played in the defeat of the expedition. He continued rightly to blame the contractors; he did not realize, or at least did not admit, that he had been culpably over-optimistic in his assumption of the speed with which vehicles could be assembled and men and supplies moved to the Ohio over the rough, mountainous road George slowly had reopened.
Detailed judgment of the misadventure had not been formulated fully by the time George and Mackay hurried to Winchester, where they reported to Colonel Innes, their Commander-in-Chief. They left Winchester on July 11 to ride to Williamsburg to report to the Governor. It was July 17, a fortnight after the bloody day at Fort Necessity, that the two officers reached Williamsburg.
The Governor received George, heard the details of what had happened, and began to make his preparations for the next phase of the struggle. His new orders to Colonel Innes were for the building at Wills Creek of a log fort to receive six months’ provisions. “. . . I think it’s not prudent to march out to the Ohio,” the Governor wrote, “till you have a sufficient force to attack the enemy, and that you be properly provided with everything for that purpose.” This policy was accepted as sound and fixed.
George found that his expedition was the theme of every man’s talk in Williamsburg. He was himself conspicuous, not to say famous. The victory in the skirmish with Jumonville had been much applauded. Public men shared his humiliation at having signed a document that admitted the “assassination” of the young French officer, but this word was attributed more violently than ever to treachery on the part of van Braam. No blame was attached to Washington for the capitulation itself.
Otherwise than by Dinwiddie, official commendation of George and the other officers could not be expected immediately in Virginia because the General Assembly was not in session; but the Governor and Council did have authority to make a grant to the men from money voted at the previous session. When, therefore, Washington started back to his command, he had in his baggage three hundred pistoles for distribution among the men of his Regiment and of the South Carolina Independent Company “as a reward for their bravery in the recent engagement with the French.”
George found the survivors of the expedition in worse condition than they had been at any time. The Independent Companies remained at Wills Creek; his own men had come—or soon came—to Alexandria. They were demoralized, half naked, without hats or blankets, and were in resentful temper because they had not been paid. Some had created disorder at Winchester; others had deserted and carried their arms with them. Miserable as was their plight, George could do little to relieve it, except to appeal to the Governor to remit funds with which to pay them. George learned, also, that the North Carolina troops were close to dissolution because the fund for their support was almost exhausted. The Independent Companies, especially Mackay’s, remained under discipline and in fair condition, but they were numerically weak.
George knew that, lamentable though it was, the men who had been engaged at Fort Necessity were incapable of another effort that year. Clarke’s and Innes’s troops were not equipped or seasoned for the attempt. Even if they were, they lacked adequate transport, without which advance was self-murder. Colonel Washington, for these reasons, was stunned when he opened, a few days later, a dispatch from Dinwiddie dated August 3. Another attempt was to be made forthwith to drive the French from the Ohio. It seemed incredible that such a thing could be considered by a Governor who a fortnight previously had been content to talk of building a fort at Wills Creek and of victualling it for six months’ supply of troops who were not to start westward until they were equipped and concentrated.
George’s orders were that he was to proceed as soon as possible to Wills Creek with the troops he had. The Council, Dinwiddie explained, had decided that, as the French probably would be stronger in the spring of 1755, it would be wise to recross the Alleghenies at the earliest possible moment and either to capture Fort DuQuesne or to construct defences at some point selected by a council of war. Washington was to join Innes for this purpose.
George stood aghast at Dinwiddie’s plan. It seemed the counsel of madness. At the moment he did not trust himself to address the Governor. He reflected and, as soon as he could muster his arguments and discharge his temper, he wrote William Fairfax a long critique of Dinwiddie’s plan. George tore the plan to bits and, in doing so, gave himself an excellent drill in military analysis. If he realized, when he finished it, how much he had learned since the previous November concerning the management of troops and preparation for war, he did not drop a boastful word. The subject was too grim for self-praise. Study of a theoretical military problem was not enjoyable when he might be required to attempt an impossible solution.
The next day he wrote Innes that he was withholding the letter “to Williamsburg,” until he heard from the North Carolinian, so that he might “write nothing inconsistent with what” his immediate superior proposed. Then George recorded explicitly: “If you think it advisable to order me in the shattered condition we are in to march up to you, I will, if no more than ten men follows me (which I believe will be the full amount). . . .”
Events of the next few days made this prediction almost a probability. Desertion continued. Every night or so, some of the ragged men of the Virginia Regiment would slip away. Strength of the Regiment dropped steadily towards a minimum of 150. Among the North Carolina soldiers conditions were even worse. One company mutinied in Augusta County; a like spirit was said to prevail among the others. With alarming speed, companies disbanded for lack of money with which to provide pay or purchase subsistence. By the end of August barely twoscore or, at most, fifty North Carolinians remained as an organized force in Virginia.
Soon George heard at Alexandria that Dinwiddie had declared the plans for an offensive “entirely defeated” by the “obstinacy of our Assembly” in its failure to provide financial support to contest the French, the disbanding of the North Carolinians and the reduction in the strength of the Virginia Regiment. The Governor argued stubbornly that if the Burgesses had provided the money, he could have raised six hundred troops and thereby could have offset the loss of the Carolinians. Plans for an offensive in the autumn of 1754 were suspended. New alarm seized frontier families who expected Indian attacks.
About September 15 marching orders reached Washington, but they opened with the statement by the Governor: “I fear we are not numbers sufficient to attack the fort taken from us by the French.” George was to proceed to Wills Creek with such men as he could muster after detaching forty or fifty, who were to go to Augusta County as a guard against incursions of small bodies of Indians and perhaps of French. At Wills Creek George and the remnant of the Regiment would receive further orders. In all these dealings there was one consolation only: The General Assembly, before prorogation, had voted thanks to George and Mackay and to their respective officers, except Muse and van Braam, “for their late gallant and brave behaviour in the defence of their country.”
As it eventuated, circumstances and sickness probably relieved George of the unnecessary march to Wills Creek that autumn. The loss of health he attributed to the hardships he had endured; the hampering circumstances were the preparations for the departure of Captain Lewis’s men for Augusta, and, doubtless, Washington’s inability to get others equipped for a winter on the upper Potomac.
Avoidance of that dull service was not escape from all annoyance. On the contrary, there were new irritations, regrets and further humiliation. Gov. Horatio Sharpe of Maryland made criticisms of the affair at Fort Necessity in a manner that showed misunderstanding of what had happened. The principal regret was over news of the death of Half King. Half King had been the most loyal of the supporters of England in the realm of the Six Nations. It was distressing to learn that he had arrived at Paxton, Pennsylvania, on October 1 in ill health. Three days later he died. George’s new humiliations were over the prospect that if he went back to Wills Creek, he no longer would be commander of the forces. Instead, he would be subordinate to Innes and in unpleasant relationship to the Captains of the Independent Companies. Either he would have to remain entirely separate from those officers or recognize their authority as superior to his.
George had an accumulation of discontent and humiliation weighing on his mind when he started for Williamsburg about October 17, the date to which the House of Burgesses had been prorogued by the Governor. On October 21 he was in Williamsburg. He found the Governor busy in the entertainment of distinguished men and in the planning of a larger war with greater means. The Governor of North Carolina, Arthur Dobbs, had arrived in Williamsburg after a dismal voyage from Spithead. He had brought from the home government £10,000 in specie for Dinwiddie’s use in securing the defence of the Colony, and he had delivered also a crown credit for a like sum and notice that two thousand stands of arms were to be sent to Virginia. Important dispatches had been in Dobbs’s hands for Governor Sharpe, whom Dinwiddie in His Majesty’s name was to summon to Williamsburg for conference with the Governors of Virginia and North Carolina. Obediently, Sharpe had been able to reach the Virginia town on the nineteenth and had been closeted with Dinwiddie and Dobbs.
Washington learned at least something of what was contemplated. Together, the three executives were working on a plan similar to the one Dinwiddie had formulated in August and had abandoned when money ran out and the North Carolina troops scattered. The information of the Governors was that the French force on the Ohio was so reduced that a new opportunity was offered the English. If practicable, Sharpe, who had received a Lieutenant Colonel’s commission from the King, was to raise seven hundred men who, with the Independent Companies, were to proceed forthwith to the Ohio and capture Fort DuQuesne before the French could reenforce it.
Amazement over this rash scheme was effaced almost immediately by news for which Washington was altogether unprepared. The Virginia Regiment was to be broken into Independent Companies! George would cease to be a Colonel and would become a Captain, and that not even on the King’s commission, unless and until His Majesty approved Dinwiddie’s recommendation that the Colonials be on the regular establishment. His pride rebelled against such a thing. Sharpe tried to prevail on George to serve with the troops he was to raise. When George declined, Sharpe asked that Washington at least promise to consider any proposition he might be able to make after he returned to Maryland. George could not refuse this but he did not believe Sharpe could tender a position he could accept. “I think,” he said later, “the disparity between the present offer of a company and my former rank too great to expect any real satisfaction or enjoyment in a corps where I once did, or thought I had a right, to command. . .̵
In that spirit, proud and indignant but not openly wrathful, Washington tendered his resignation as Colonel of the Virginia Regiment. Dinwiddie accepted it. George turned decisively to other matters and completed his shopping in Williamsburg by purchasing new fittings and horse furnishings of the sort a planter of station required. Then on November 2, he started home.
George had no rendezvous except with his own lands, to which he had given little attention during the year that had elapsed since he had undertaken to carry Dinwiddie’s message to Fort Le Boeuf. On November 15, 1753, he had been at Wills Creek and had been engaging Gist as a guide for his first great adventure in the wilderness. November 15, 1754, he was sitting at a desk in Colonel Fairfax’s Belvoir. Within twelve months had come, first, the journey almost to Lake Erie and the struggle in the snow as Geoige hurried back to warn Dinwiddie that the French were preparing to descend to the Ohio. They had done so quickly enough and had driven off Ward before Washington could reach the Monongahela. The responsibilities and excitement of acting as leader of the advanced column, the anxieties and disappointments of command, promotion to the rank of Colonel after the death of Fry, the difficulties with Mackay, the doubtful conferences with the Indians, the affair with Jumonville, the attempt to cut a road to Red Stone Creek, the shameless delay of contractors, the hunger of the soldiers, the disappearance of the red warriors, the blood and the mud of July 3, the humiliation of retreat and of that word “assassination,” the journey to Williamsburg, the thanks of the House of Burgesses, and then the blow, almost the insult, of dropping from the first post of field command to the rank of Captain subordinate to every half-pay officer who might come from England—all this had been hard. George had given his every energy to his duty and had endured more of hardship than any Virginian of his day had been called on to suffer in the public service. It had been shabbily rewarded, he thought. He himself had been repudiated and humiliated. Now the whole of it was behind him. In front of him, there on the desk, was the single sheet on which he was to accept or decline the offer Governor Sharpe had extended on November 4 through William Fitzhugh in accordance with the promise made at Williamsburg.
Sharpe had done his best: If George would reconsider his resignation, Colonel Innes would be no obstacle to his service, because the North Carolinian was merely to exercise post command at Wills Creek. When Sharpe himself was not afield, Fitzhugh would see to it that George would not be required to take orders from those who had been his juniors when he was on the frontier. A letter from Sharpe to Dinwiddie, written to give assurance of this, was enclosed with the Marylander’s invitation and could be forwarded to Williamsburg if George accepted the offer. Fitzhugh added his personal advice “by no means to quit.”
No! He would not accept it. Sharpe and Fitzhugh deserved, of course, the best and most polite answer he could pen, because they had been considerate and generous; but the decision stood—no. Col. George Washington would not submit to loss of rank which Sharpe did not have authority to change. George so wrote Fitzhugh, gravely and politely, and explained that as he could not use it, he was returning Sharpe’s letter to Dinwiddie. Of the Maryland Governor, George wrote:” . . . assure him, sir, as you truly may, of my reluctance to quit the service and of the pleasure I should have received in attending his fortunes. Also inform him that it was to obey the call of honor, and the advice of my friends, I declined it, and not to gratify any desire I have to leave the military line.”
Then he added, in regret and in confession, in memory of stirring days and perhaps in vague thought of the future: “My inclinations are strongly bent to arms.”
