At the time, George Washington was not of mind nor of mood to consider Braddock’s strategy. The nearer realities of fatigue and humiliation absorbed the young Virginian. Old resentments rose again; George’s military experience seemed to be a succession of unregarded sacrifices. He would not have it so another time! Never would he engage on the same terms. Command must be his, and under conditions he would himself impose.
Both Dunbar and Sharpe considered a westward advance impractical, and Colonel Dunbar had the troops leave Fort Cumberland and proceed to Philadelphia. Dinwiddie protested: Dunbar had no authority whatsoever for carrying them to Philadelphia—to go into “winter quarters” in the middle of August! As Dinwiddie saw it, the British had opened an easy road of French advance from the Ohio to the Virginia frontier. The worst seemed to be in prospect when Indians appeared in Maryland and on the northwestern frontier of Virginia and began to murder isolated families.
It was manifest from the hour the General Assembly met on August 5 that what was left of the Virginia Regiment must be augmented, equipped and assigned the task of dealing with the savages and with any French who might descend on the frontier. This prospect aroused George’s interest and led him to consider a journey to Williamsburg, but he was discouraged by continued physical weakness and conviction that he could not get a new command on terms he would care to accept. He abandoned the idea of visiting the capital and began to devote such energies as he possessed to his private affairs and the musters he was expected to hold as District Adjutant.
As August slipped by and the exposure of the frontier became apparent, George underwent a slight change of mind. On August 13 he received a letter from his friend and cousin, Warner Lewis, who had been in Williamsburg the previous week: The General Assembly had voted £40,000 for the defence of the Colony; there was talk of raising as many as four thousand men to repel the French and Indians. “Everyone of my acquaintance,” Lewis wrote, “profess[es] a fondness for your having the command of the men now to be raised.”
Within a week George had more positive information: He learned that Dinwiddie was willing to name him commander of the forces to be raised. He felt that he should go to Williamsburg and hear what the Governor might propose. Before George reached Williamsburg, Dinwiddie issued commissions to Captains of most of the sixteen companies that were to be formed into a regiment. This must have been a disappointment to George. When he had written Lewis of the conditions under which he might accept command he had put first “having the officers in some measure appointed with my advice, and with my concurrence.”
Dinwiddie offered George command of the enlarged Regiment and met the other conditions he had imposed—that he have a military chest and two needed assistants, one an aide-de-camp and the other a secretary. If Commissary Charles Dick resigned, as he had indicated he would, Colonel Washington would be free to name his successor. Finally, there was a new distinction: George would not only be in charge of the Regiment but also “commander of all the forces that now are or may be employed in the country’s service.” Everything was offered except that which George considered most essential, a voice in the selection of his subordinate officers.
Would Colonel Washington accept? With all thanks to the Governor for the compliment paid him, he would not. Dinwiddie was not prepared for George’s refusal, but the Scotch Governor was not to be downed. At length, he offered a compromise: As he had named the Captains, George might select the field officers. This meant much, not only as the vindication of a principle but also because it assured George the continuing service of Adam Stephen and Andrew Lewis, whom he had tested. Probably, also, at some stage of the negotiations and without the Governor’s knowledge, members of the committee charged with the expenditure of funds made a financial proposal that appealed to Washington: he could have pay of 305. a day, £100 yearly for his table, an allowance for batmen and a commission of 2 per cent on all funds he handled. When all the considerations were weighed, George concluded that if he stood to lose reputation by assuming a difficult command, he might lose still more in public esteem by persistent refusal.
Once he said “Yes,” August 31, 1755, all his energies were given to his new duties. He issued recruiting orders promptly to the officers in Williamsburg and left September 3 with a small amount of public funds to resume active duty.
The new Commander-in-Chief found trouble at the first town he reached after he left Williamsburg. When he arrived in Fredericksburg September 5, he learned that as volunteers had not been forthcoming, some vagrants had been drafted. The recruits had protested so violently that it had been necessary to lock them in jail to prevent desertion. This had incensed friends of the prisoners, who had broken into the building, released the mutineers, and defied the militia officers. A more ominous beginning to the campaign for new troops George scarcely could have experienced. It convinced him that drafted men would be worthless as soldiers unless they were under strong officers who would have the weapon of positive and punitive law. Major Lewis, who had the firmness and vigor to control the men, was directed to come to Fredericksburg and assume command there.
George had another disillusioning experience in Fredericksburg. He had been told by Dinwiddie that it would be well to retain Dick, who had threatened to cancel an agreement he had made to deliver provisions and supplies at Wills Creek. George saw Dick and on September 6 talked fully with him. He was not satisfied that Dick’s heart was in the enterprise. Thus, the old difficulty of provisioning the army, the old problem of getting food to the frontier, was rising once more. It seemed to be one of the essential things that somehow never were well done.
From Fredericksburg George rode to Alexandria where he found a situation scarcely better. At the regular muster of the militia an effort had been made to get recruits for the Regiment. Not a man stepped forward. The new officers who had accepted commissions to raise troops began to express apprehension of failure as soon as they had the coveted papers in their hands. No men, no discipline, no clothing, no organization, no money—within a week after Washington had taken command, more and more of the story of the spring of 1754 was repeating itself.
George hurried on to Winchester and to Wills Creek and Fort Cumberland. This badly placed defence was not yet complete and still was exposed to easy rifle-fire from woods that had been left standing across the creek. The garrison consisted of the survivors of the Virginia Regiment, together with the Maryland Company of Capt. John Dagworthy, who had been with Braddock’s army. Many had deserted, but 198 rank and file remained. Stephen was nominally in command but he did not have the men under firm discipline. With his usual amiability in his treatment of officers, Washington set his subordinates to their duties. After that, orders were issued in steady flow—to deal with drunkenness, swearing and obscene language, to terminate traffic in liquor, to complete the work on the fort and, in general, to improve discipline.
As soon as he had put affairs in order at Fort Cumberland, Washington started up the Shenandoah Valley, past Winchester, and over the Allegheny Mountains. By September 25, he reached Fort Dinwiddie. Its condition was bad enough to dishearten. Troops who had erected the stockade had answered so many alarms that they had not had time to build the bastions. Ammunition was low. There was no salt for fresh meat and no prospect of pickling any beef for winter unless salt, tools and implements were sent.
Far worse were conditions to the west. On the Greenbrier River the approach of Indian raiders in August had caused settlers to hurry to a feeble little fort. About sixty persons had been huddling there when the Indians descended on them. The defenders in four days lost thirteen and perhaps more before the savages made off. The Indians, in addition, took perhaps a dozen lives, carried off two girls, burned eleven houses and slaughtered or drove with them horses and cattle estimated to number five hundred.
This hurried tour of inspection dramatized the impossibility of George’s task in defending a long frontier with a handful of men. Recruiting had to be expedited. Lives depended on it. So did the security of the Colony, and, in part, the recovery of the Ohio. The experience of his first month in command convinced him that he had a multitude of perplexities some of which must be discussed with the Governor and with the Burgesses’ committee on expenditures. Washington stopped at Alexandria only long enough to issue some essential orders, and then took the road to the capital.
George had proceeded as far as the plantation of his friend Col. John Baylor on October 7 when an express pushed up the lane with a dispatch from Stephen. This bore date of Winchester, October 4, and began: “Matters are in the most deplorable situation at Fort Cumberland.” There followed some information about items of less importance at the fort and then: “Unless relief is sent to the back inhabitants immediately none will stay on this side Monocasy or Winchester.” George read on: “I have reason to believe Captain Dagworthy will look upon himself as commanding officer after you have joined the troops.”
That sentence may or may not have stuck in Washington’s mind at the moment. The rest of the letter shaped instant duty: he must report the situation to the Governor; he must tell His Honor he could not proceed to Williamsburg; and he must go back full speed to Fredericksburg and thence to the frontier.
Within less than three hours after he wrote the Governor, George rode into Fredericksburg where he met Stephen, who, like himself, had started for Williamsburg. The Lieutenant Colonel had an even worse situation to report than described in his letter. Washington listened, put the new information in focus, left Fredericksburg late on the eighth and proceeded to Winchester. When he arrived there he found a madhouse. Except at Fort Necessity and on the dreadful day of Braddock’s defeat, he never had encountered so much confusion and panic. Facing it, he kept his head and went instantly to work.
On the eleventh George wrote the Governor of the situation and of his inability under existing statutes to compel the obedience of the militia. Less than six weeks after his appointment to command, he was so discouraged that he talked of quitting. He told Dinwiddie: “I must with great regret decline the honor that has been so generously intended me; and for this only reason I do it—the foreknowledge I have of failing in every point that might justly be expected from a person invested with full power to exert his authority.”
About 8 P.M. that evening a fear-stricken express staggered into Win-Chester with a report that Indians had reached a plantation about twelve miles from the town and that the settlers in that neighborhood were fleeing. George strengthened the guard and sent two scouts to ascertain how numerous the Indians were and in what direction they were moving. On the morning of October 12 another express dashed into Winchester, “ten times more terrified,” as George judged him, than the man who had arrived the previous evening.
The next day brought a change for the better. Although George received information that the militia on the South Branch intended to leave their post, reports from scouts were that the Indians were leaving the stream. Major Lewis, with the recruits from Fredericksburg, was within one day’s march of Winchester. Capt. Thomas Waggener arrived on the morning of the thirteenth with thirty men after a rapid advance from Alexandria. George now sent out expresses on all the roads to assure fleeing farmers that danger was past and posted public notice that the Indians were believed to have returned home and that the frontiers soon would be well guarded. Preparations were made, also, for Washington himself to proceed to Fort Cumberland to strengthen its garrison.
Wills Creek was reached on October 25. Fort Cumberland was intact, though Indians had come almost within gunshot. Families of nearby settlements had been victims of cruelty that made survivors blanch. On one farm, the unburied bodies of a scalped woman, a small boy and a young man lay near a burned house. A party of soldiers found three persons who had been brained with stakes, scalped and thrown into a fire that had half consumed the victims. Adequate security, in Washington’s opinion, depended on four things—recruiting the Regiment to full strength, strengthening the militia law, a successful effort to procure the services of friendly Indians, and erection of a few small, temporary forts to serve as cover for rangers and their provisions.
In settling such of these matters as had to be arranged north of the Potomac, Washington moved fast because he had encountered a stubborn man who had raised a contentious issue, John Dagworthy, Captain of the Maryland Company at Fort Cumberland. In 1746 Dagworthy had received a royal commission as Captain and had undertaken to raise a company to share in the Canadian expedition. He worked hard and had 103 officers and men in his company, one of five raised in New Jersey, but those troops saw no active service. After they were discharged, Dagworthy and another captain went to England, with the endorsement of the Council of New Jersey, to see if they could continue as officers of the regular establishment. They did not succeed in this ambition, but Dagworthy effected an arrangement whereby he received a sum of money in lieu of half pay or further service. He was not, apparently, required to return the document by which he had been commissioned in 1746. Sometime after his return to America, Dagworthy removed to Maryland. He was residing there when, in August 1754, Governor Sharpe undertook to raise a company for the defence of the frontier. Command of this small force was given Dagworthy. It participated in Braddock’s campaign, during the course of which Dagworthy asserted that his royal commission of 1746-48 still obtained and therefore gave him seniority over Colonial officers. Braddock had to sustain this contention and, indeed, to admit that Dagworthy, by date of commission, outranked all except two Captains of the regiments from England. With the defeat of Braddock and the scattering of the forces, Dagworthy’s contention temporarily was forgotten, but about October 1, 1755, he returned to Fort Cumberland, where some thirty survivors of his Maryland Company were included in the garrison. Command of the fort had been vested by Dinwiddie and then by Braddock in Colonel Innes, who, on leaving the post, had assigned the command to Stephen as senior officer present. Dagworthy insisted that he outranked Stephen and had authority to direct affairs at the fort. He did not push his argument to the point where he actually gave orders to the Virginia Regiment, but he contrived to take over the fort itself from Stephen and he demanded and received all the honors due the commander.
There was no disposition on the part of George or of Dinwiddie to discredit Dagworthy, but neither would admit the validity of Dagworthy’s assertion of the right of command. There was a question in their minds whether his royal commission had not lapsed when he was given a flat sum on expiration of service instead of being put on half pay. However that might be, Dagworthy, as the Virginians saw it, would have been entitled to command if, but only if, he had been sent to Fort Cumberland by the King’s order to serve where regular and Colonial troops were stationed together. He had not come to the fort under orders “from home” but by direction of the Governor of Maryland. Dagworthy, in George’s eyes, was the Captain of thirty Maryland soldiers—that and no more. So firmly was Washington convinced of this, and so fully determined to maintain his seniority, that he resolved he would surrender his commission before he would accept Dagworthy’s pretensions to command. At the same time, George remembered that Braddock had recognized Dagworthy’s commission and reasoned that he might have to accept the Captain’s orders so long as he was at Fort Cumberland. In the circumstances, it was desirable to leave the fort before this issue came to a test.
Another reason for finishing speedily all official business on Wills Creek was a letter from Dinwiddie concerning better regulation of the Virginia troops. The Governor wrote that he realized the defects of the existing military statutes and had called the General Assembly to meet on October 27 and correct them. He hoped George would be in attendance to explain the need of stronger laws. Washington could not possibly get to Williamsburg by the date the session opened, but he determined to go there as fast as he might.
As the revised bill stood when George arrived from the frontier, it provided the death penalty for mutiny, desertion, the refusal of an officer to obey his superior, and and any act of violence by such an officer against the person of a senior. Lesser punishment might be meted out at the discretion of a court martial. If such a court decreed death, two-thirds of the members had to concur. Execution could not be carried out until the Governor had reviewed and approved the sentence. Provision was made for the apprehension of deserters and the reward of persons who captured the culprits and returned them to their command. Some defects of this act may have been apparent to George when he first read its terms. Others were to be brought to light by test, but, despite imperfections, the act was so much stronger than the law it replaced that Washington was encouraged.
Encouragement there was, also, in dealing with the pretensions of Dagworthy. George explained more fully to the Governor this revival of the issue of the seniority of royal commissions. Dinwiddie was irritated. He could not see the slightest basis for Dagworthy’s argument. The Governor felt he must renew to his home government his request that the officers of the Virginia Regiment be given King’s commissions. Meantime, he would write General Shirley and ask that the acting British commander issue brevet commissions to Washington, Stephen and Lewis at the rank they held in Virginia service. This would give them a status Dagworthy could not challenge. Until Shirley passed on this request there could be no settlement of the dispute unless the Maryland officer receded from his position.
It was the middle of November when George set out for Winchester via Fredericksburg. At the Rappahannock town, George received reports from Stephen and others of quiet on the frontiers. The greatest need was a large supply of salt for pickling beef. George reasoned that he would do better to get the salt than to proceed in person to the Valley. If all went well, he told himself, he could remain near home, encouraging recruiting, until Dinwiddie received an answer from Shirley. By waiting on the lower Potomac George, moreover, could avoid a clash of authority with Dagworthy.
On December 5, George wrote the Governor for the first time since he had left Williamsburg. He explained that he had come to Alexandria to get salt and to procure recruits and supplies, and then blurted: “I have impatiently expected to hear the result of your Honor’s letter to General Shirley and wish that the delays may not prove ominous. In that case, I shall not know how to act, for I can never submit to the command of Captain Dagworthy, since you have honored me with the command of the Virginia Regiment &c.” George went on to discuss some vexations in supplying the troops and next, as if conscious his absence from Wills Creek might be criticized, he wrote: “As I cannot now conceive that any great danger can be apprehended at Fort Cumberland this winter, I am sensible that my constant attendance there cannot be so serviceable as riding from place to place, making the proper dispositions and seeing that all our necessaries are forwarded up with dispatch. I therefore think it advisable to inform your Honor of it, hoping that it will correspond with your own opinion.”
No news came from Shirley. Such information concerning Dagworthy as reached George from Fort Cumberland was an added blow to the pride of the Virginia Colonel. Stephen still had not formally surrendered command of the fort or of the troops to Dagworthy, but he had not resisted with vigor the exercise of authority by the Captain. George’s friends elsewhere were indignant that the commander of thirty Marylanders should presume to tell five hundred Virginians what they should and should not do.
Washington, about a week before Christmas, journeyed from Alexandria to Winchester. There, on the twenty-seventh, he received a letter Dinwiddie had written almost a fortnight previously. It was a paper to deepen depression. The Governor stated that the express had returned from New York, but that General Shirley had not reached the city when the messenger left. An answer from Shirley concerning Dagworthy’s status might be expected soon by another hand.
Stephen came to Winchester shortly after New Year’s Day, 1756, and brought word that Dagworthy held to the position previously taken. Washington heard from Stephen of other developments at Fort Cumberland—of a renewed petition by Virginia officers to be put on the regular establishment and of a discussion among them of the honors to which their own commanders were or were not entitled if Dagworthy actually had the authority for which he contended. On these matters George did not pass anticipatory judgment, and, as he felt he had done everything he could on the frontier for the time being, he started back to Alexandria during the second week of January. When George left the Shenandoah Valley his resolution was fixed: he would not accept Dagworthy as his superior officer. If he did not receive a favorable answer from Shirley, he would go to Boston in order to ask for a ruling on Dagworthy’s status and to lay before the General a petition his officers had drawn up for inclusion in the regular establishment. In event this appeal was vain, George would resign.
George gradually learned what Shirley had done in answer to Dinwiddie’s letter. The New England Governor and acting Commander-in-Chief wrote Dinwiddie December 4 that he had instructed Governor Sharpe to settle the dispute between Washington and Dagworthy. Sharpe promised compliance and wrote Dagworthy to confine himself to the command of the fort and not interfere with any troops in the barracks or assume any authority over the Virginians who might be posted there. Before Dinwiddie received information to this effect, Dagworthy had boasted at the fort that Sharpe had told him to keep the command. The Captain took care to obey the remainder of Sharpe’s orders, but he said nothing about his orders to leave the Virginia troops to their own officers. Dinwiddie and Washington concluded, therefore, that Sharpe had not carried out the instructions of Shirley but, on the contrary, had written Dagworthy to retain the command previously exercised. When, therefore, Dinwiddie gave his approval to a personal appeal by Washington to Shirley, the Colonel did not permit the weather of midwinter to deter him. He would go to Boston to establish his seniority as readily as he had ridden to Fort Le Boeuf to deliver the message of the Governor.
Washington remembered the fine impression that Shirley had made on him at Alexandria, but he left nothing to chance. He would make his best approach. George planned to appear in a style that befitted the “Colonel of the Virginia Regiment and the Commander-in-Chief of all the forces that now are, and shall be raised &c &c.” He arranged for Capt. George Mercer, his aide, to accompany him and act as paymaster. Capt. Robert Stewart, also, was to ride with his chief. George’s body servant was to be in attendance. A second servant, Thomas Bishop, would be useful. He perfected his arrangements and, during the first days of February 1756, set out from Alexandria.
George and his companions reached Boston February 27. Governor Shirley received George with the courtesy and kindness that had impressed the young man at Alexandria. George delivered formally his officers’ petition to be accepted on the regular establishment. Along with this he doubtless stated his opinion of Dagworthy’s asserted right to command at Fort Cumberland. Shirley was surprised that the issue had arisen, because Sharpe had promised him months before to end the dispute. Now the General listened and questioned Washington concerning recruitment, prospects and support of the war by the southern Colonies. After a time Shirley said that he would consider the question of Dagworthy’s status and would give George his decision later.
Apparently the Governor concluded that he could do nothing about the award of brevet commissions and the inclusion of the Virginia troops in the regular establishment, but on March 5, he called Washington to his office and gave him a paper that read:
Governor Dinwiddie, at the instance of Colonel Washington, having referred to me concerning the right of command between him and Captain Dagworthy, and desiring that I should determine it, I do therefore give it as my opinion, that Captain Dagworthy, who now acts under a commission from the Governor of Maryland, and where there are no troops joined, can only take rank as a provincial Captain and of course is under the command of all field officers, and, in case it should happen, that Colonel Washington and Captain Dagworthy should join at Fort Cumberland, it is my order that Colonel Washington shall take the command.
W. SHIRLEY.
In a letter to Sharpe the General directed that Dagworthy either be removed from Fort Cumberland or else be informed that if he remained he had “put himself under the command of Colonel Washington.” Shirley told Sharpe that Roger Morris had informed him Braddock had named Colonel Innes to command at Fort Cumberland and had so announced officially. “If that be so,” Shirley wrote, “the matter must remain on the same foot [Braddock] put it upon.”
It seemed a clear-cut victory for George, but there was one unhappy disclosure: On February 23, Shirley had appointed Sharpe to head all the troops to be raised in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina. At the very minute Shirley was giving George seniority over Dagworthy, an express was spurring towards Maryland, with a commission under which the man whom George believed to be responsible for Dagworthy’s stand would have control of him—and of the next expedition against Fort DuQuesne. The vindicated senior of Captain Dagworthy and the new subordinate of Governor Sharpe wasted no time in Boston after he received Shirley’s decision. Once across the Potomac again, George scarcely paused before setting off for Williamsburg to report to Dinwiddie.
By the date George started from Mount Vernon to the capital, March 25, it was known generally that Sharpe had received command of all the forces to be raised in the south for another march to the Ohio. Sharpe had himself notified both the Governor of Virginia and Stephen, who still had in his care the Virginia troops at Fort Cumberland. Dinwiddie had been prompt to extend congratulations, but Stephen was chagrined. He wrote that Captain Dagworthy boasted of influence with the new commander and strutted more than ever. Actually, Sharpe undertook to execute Shirley’s instruction that the Captain accept Washington’s orders or leave the fort; but the Governor of Maryland believed George had created the tangle by staying away from Fort Cumberland after Dagworthy had been instructed to confine himself to command of the fort and not to interfere with the Virginia troops. Before many weeks were past, George was to confess: “I know that the unhappy difference about the command . . . has kept me from Fort Cumberland. . . .” At the moment, however, he was in no mood to admit that he had evaded a test of authority with Dagworthy. On the contrary, he felt aggrieved anew that his rival’s friend and patron, Sharpe, had been put over him. It was futile to continue! When he reached Williamsburg he would resign.
When Washington arrived in Williamsburg March 30 the General Assembly was in session. The Burgesses realized that the recruiting of volunteers had not filled the Virginia Regiment and would not. A draft was unavoidable. Sentiment was strong for the construction of a long chain of small forts to protect the frontier, a policy which Washington believed the Colony could not execute without a far larger number of men than there was any reason to believe Virginia would call to service. Few hours were given Washington at the capital. There was not time, in fact, to explain to the Governor why he once again had resolved to resign. When the Colonel had been in Williamsburg only a day or two, an express brought bloody news: French and Indians had broken into the frontier settlements. Details were few; danger was acute. George started back to his command.
On the long, familiar road, George had time for reflection. Immediately ahead there might be excitement and tragedy. Then, sooner or later, there would be another offensive. With that in prospect, Washington’s ambition triumphed over his pique and disappointment. Resignation seemed no longer to be demanded by his pride. If there was to be a march to Fort DuQuesne, he must share it—and, at the least, must be second in command. George did what more than once he had found effective—he asked directly for the position he wanted. He wrote a formal request to Shirley to commission him as second officer in the new enterprise.
George reached Winchester April 6 and found the people in “a general consternation.” Indians had overrun most of the back settlements and murdered an unreckoned number of persons with the cruelty of hell’s own tortures. Nearly all the frontier families had abandoned their homes and fled to Winchester or to the nearest of the few garrisoned stockades. George was almost helpless. In Winchester he could not muster more than forty armed men. Gunpowder was low. The greater part of supplies and provisions of the Regiment were at Fort Cumberland. From that base, Winchester virtually was cut off. Washington had endured and survived the raids of the previous autumn, but his experience then did not equip him to stop panic or deafen him to the horrible stories of murder and pillage.
Relief of a sort came suddenly. On the seventh, into George’s quarters strode Richard Pearis, Indian trader and interpreter: He and some companions had run into a small party of Indians with whom they had exchanged fire for about half an hour. One of Pearis’s men had been killed and two wounded, but the Virginians had hit several of the enemy and had slain the leader, a Frenchman. Pearis produced the scalp and a bag taken from the dead man. This bag contained instructions from the commander at Fort DuQuesne and identified the slain officer as the Sieur Douville. The instructions, signed by Dumas—a well-known officer who had distinguished himself in the battle of the Monongahela—bade Douville conform to the usages of honor and humanity and restrain the savages. At the same time, he was to undertake to burn the magazines at Conococheague, far inside the settlements. The very boldness of this design made the outcome of the first skirmish all the more pleasing to Washington. He forwarded Douville’s scalp to Dinwiddie, with the recommendation that the men who took it be rewarded as Indians would have been for the same feat. The Colonel proceeded to send out scouting parties, but the killing of Douville appeared to have discouraged the raiders. Although frightened settlers continued to flee, no additional murders were reported for several days.
George took advantage of this breathing spell to plan for the future: At the earliest possible date he would undertake a sharp offensive. To succeed in this, he must have the aid of courageous Redmen immediately. “Indians are the only match for Indians,” Washington said, “and without these we shall ever fight upon unequal terms.” Looking beyond the instant crisis Washington reasoned that troops of the type of his own Virginia Regiment had to be the backbone of any permanent force. As he did not think it possible to procure volunteers, he reasoned that the new draft should be of able-bodied marksmen for a term of eighteen to twenty months. By the end of that period, George somewhat grimly observed, two campaigns would have brought “matters nearly to a crisis one way or other.” The General Assembly was expected to vote £20,000 and authorize an increase of his command, by means of the draft, to two thousand men. All these troops George wished to incorporate into a single regiment, under his own direction, rather than to see them organized into two regiments, with someone else as colonel of the second.
On April 18 Colonel Innes arrived from Williamsburg, which he had visited after some months in North Carolina. Innes was not unwelcome per se at Winchester, but he was the bearer of a letter from Dinwiddie that infuriated Washington. The Governor enclosed a commission to hold courts martial, and then went brusquely on: “I hope the affairs of the Regiment are not in so bad a condition as represented here. The Assembly were greatly inflamed, being told that the greatest immoralities and drunkenness have been much countenanced, and proper discipline neglected; I am willing to think better of our officers and therefore suspend my judgment till I hear from you.”
Washington wrote the Governor a vigorous denial. Then he made his indirect confession that pride and a desire to avoid possible humiliation at the hands of Dagworthy might have been responsible in part, for what now was alleged: “I . . . know that the unhappy difference about the command, which has kept me from Fort Cumberland, has consequently prevented me from enforcing the orders, which I never fail to send.”
George was in this state of mind—sensitive, humiliated and half convinced of error—when, on April 19, a sergeant of the Virginia Regiment brought a most alarming report from Lieut. William Stark at Edwards’s Fort. Stark reported a losing engagement in which two officers and fifteen men had been left, some of them dead, in the hands of the enemy. Stark’s letter indicated that many French were participating and that they had surrounded, and were preparing to storm, the feeble defences.
Edwards’s Fort was on Cacapon River in Hampshire County, distant not more than twenty miles from Winchester. The first attack might be preliminary; the town itself might be the real objective of a powerful raid. Washington called into council Colonel Innes and those officers of the Virginia Regiment in Winchester. What did the council recommend? Judgment was unanimous. The militia of Frederick and adjoining counties must be raised immediately; when a strong force was available, it should take the offensive.
Washington accepted these recommendations. Capt. William Peachey was hurried off to notify the Governor and ask for a muster of the militia. Lord Fairfax was urged to call on the militia of Frederick and the adjacent counties to move to Winchester as rapidly as possible. Washington did all that was recommended, but he felt that reliance of any sort on the militia was worse than doubtful.
Bad news followed bad. From several outposts George received expresses that informed him of isolation, threatened attack and shortage of provisions. The story was one of gloom, danger and murder. Indians and French were believed to be prowling almost every road; attack on Winchester appeared imminent. Every day, every hour—almost every minute as it seemed to George—brought new alarms, but no report of reenforcements. One express after another was dispatched with appeals for help from other counties. George sent a second officer to Williamsburg to explain the situation and ask for arms and ammunition.
He had learned from Williamsburg that the General Assembly probably would pass a bill for the erection of a new and longer chain of forts. His most recent information was, also, that the total armed force to be authorized by the lawmakers was to consist of only 1500 men. On the twenty-fourth George wrote a letter in which he put these two probabilities together and discussed the defensive policy of Virginia with as much of calm logic as if he had been, on an untroubled day, at the Governor’s Palace or in the council chamber of the capitol. He did not muster all his arguments at the moment and had to return to the subject three days later; but in the two papers he disclosed ability to rid his eyes of the motes of the day and fix them in undeviating scrutiny on a single issue. His argument was not in vain. The bill for erecting the forts had been passed before his letters reached Williamsburg, but the measure was forthwith amended to authorize what he particularly recommended, a strong fort at Winchester.
George had to write the Governor April 27: “Desolation and murder still increase, and no prospects of relief. The Blue Ridge is now our frontier, no men being left in this County except a few that keep close with a number of women and children in forts, which they have erected for the purpose. There are now no militia in this County; when there were, they could not be brought to action.”
The prospect now changed. Dinwiddie had not been idle. After Lord Fairfax’s appeals for help had been sent out, the Governor had ordered the Lieutenants of Frederick and the nine counties east of the Blue Ridge and nearest the lower Shenandoah Valley to muster their militia, draft one-half of them, and have them rendezvous at Winchester. Almost to Washington’s surprise, they “actually came.”
By cruel chance, it now seemed that the invaders had begun to leave precisely when the militia commenced to reenforce the small Virginia Regiment. Information was scant and not convincing, but by the end of April it indicated that the raid was over and that the Indians had started back to Fort DuQuesne. Indeed, the Colonel had the embarrassing prospect of more militiamen than he could shelter or use or willingly would feed and pay at the expense of the Colony. In tones almost ludicrously different from those of his recent calls for help, George now wrote the Governor “humbly to offer it to Your Honor’s superior judgment if it would not be advisable to stop all the militia that are ordered from the ten Counties, save about five or six hundred from the adjacent ones?”
There was no stopping the flow of militia once they began to descend on the Valley. Three days brought Washington about 670 militiamen. He had to elaborate his plans for employing them. Otherwise the “quarrelsome fellows” would war among themselves. It was difficult to find employment for all. After the garrisons were drafted and artisans enlisted, the others either should be dismissed or sent to defend the exposed southern part of the western frontier. To make a wise choice, George called the field officers into council on the fourteenth. They were unanimously against attempting to use the militia at a great distance and of one mind in advising the discharge of all not “absolutely necessary to resist a second invasion upon this quarter.” Washington accepted this decision.
When he came to compute the number of militiamen required at the ten places he had chosen as their posts, he found he would need at least 482 of the 877 men, or thereabout, around Winchester and in the town. At sunset on May 16 part of the militia were ready to march to their stations on the basis of a fair drawing of names; the others were going home; from among the whole number, seventy had been employed as carpenters to work in Winchester at six pence per day in addition to their regular pay. The situation thus appeared to be better.
That very night brought mockery, suddenly and incredibly. An express rode into town with letters from Ashby’s, Cocke’s and Pearsall’s forts, all to the same effect: A considerable body of Indians was said to be astir in the region of Patterson Creek and the South Branch. Incautiously, the express let the contents of his dispatches be known to some of the militia. Men under orders to go to the South Branch or to Patterson Creek pictured themselves as scalped already. They deserted en masse. So ruinous were the desertions, fired by reports of the return of the savages, that Colonel Washington had to revise his assignments for guarding the forts and reduce the number of places to be defended. He sent messengers off, also, to the militia officers who were marching men homeward. These leaders were told to reverse their steps and bring back their soldiers to take the place of those who had disappeared, but they could not. The militia had vanished as a fighting force.
Fortunately, the rumors that had produced the final panic of the militia were as untrue as the runaways. No additional murders were committed; no hostile Indians were seen. Washington sent forward militiamen who had not deserted and stationed them where they would encourage and assist the planters in reestablishing themselves.
The decision for the maintenance of a defensive in Virginia had been made by the Burgesses. To secure the frontiers a chain of forts must be constructed and extended southward almost to North Carolina. Over the size, number and location of these forts, conference and argument appeared endless. George’s view was that it was impossible with scanty forces to maintain additional forts on the upper stretches of Patterson Creek or the South Branch of the Potomac because of the distance from Winchester and the difficulties of supply. Fort Cumberland, on the other hand, was so isolated that its garrison neither could serve usefully in the defence of Virginia nor receive and forward promptly information of the enemy’s movements towards the region of the Shenandoah. It might be wise to keep a small number of men on Wills Creek. Chief reliance must be on a fort at Winchester, strong enough to serve as a magazine and as a refuge for the settlers during Indian raids. Roads converged at Winchester; it was the starting point for an advance on Fort DuQuesne. That French stronghold was the supreme objective. Nothing was safe and nothing stable till the enemy was driven from the Ohio.
To connect Fort Cumberland and the new defences at Winchester, George thought another large work might advantageously be erected, but the line between the Valley town and Wills Creek, Washington kept insisting, was the most advanced that could be held in 1756. Based on this line the companies of the Regiment not employed in the main forts could be placed “equidistant,” in Washington’s own words, “or at proper passes along our frontiers.” George had been careful not to protest too vigorously against the extension of the chain of forts as far southward as the General Assembly desired, but he had been no less careful to point out that 1500 men could not cover the whole of the Virginia frontier.
The weeks after the departure of the savages brought Washington some mild satisfaction and, as always, a measure of new distress, personal and official. On May 12 the King proclaimed more liberal regulations on the subject of rank. Recognition of a sort was given Colonial general and field officers. They remained the juniors of all officers of like insignia and royal commission, but in North America they were to take rank as the “eldest Captains.” There was gratification, besides, in the assurances friends were giving George that charges now being raised of immorality and drunkenness in the Regiment were not leveled against him. Another development made Washington feel “much affected” because his whole future as a soldier might be involved. In a communication received from Dinwiddie during the last week of April, George read: “Letters from Britain leave us still in uncertainty as to peace or war. Two Generals are appointed for America—Lord Loudoun and General Abercrombie—and it’s thought they will bring over two Battalions, but whether for this place or New York remains uncertain; but it’s further said His Majesty intends to send blank commissions for the Americans. If so, I doubt not you will be taken care of.”
On April 16 Shirley had learned through private letters that Lord Loudoun had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s forces in North America and that Gen. Daniel Webb was coming over at once to assume direction of military affairs until Loudoun arrived. Shirley had felt that as his notification was unofficial, he should go ahead with his preparations for the campaign of 1756. In that spirit he wrote Sharpe on May 16 that he would name Washington second in command of the Ohio expedition “if there is nothing in the King’s orders, which I am in continual expectation of, that interferes with it.”
Washington did not wait for these developments. As soon as it was apparent that Loudoun was to be the man to decide on operations and the subordinates who were to participate in them, he wrote Dinwiddie and asked the Governor to recommend him to the new Commander-in-Chief. “His Honor” almost was grieved that Washington had thought this necessary. “You need not have wrote me,” he said, “to recommend you to the Earl of Loudoun.” The Governor explained: “I wrote fully to General Abercrombie, who is second in command, and my particular friend, in your favor, which I think much better than writing to his Lordship, as I know the influence he has with him.” In the letter to Abercromby, the Governor praised Washington as a “very deserving Gentleman,” for whom, had Braddock lived, he doubtless would “have provided . . . handsomely in the regulars.” Dinwiddie went on to say of Washington: “If his Lordship will be so kind as to promote him in the British establishment, I think he will answer my recommendation.”
Washington left Winchester June 4 and rode to Williamsburg to settle his accounts and discuss plans for the new forts. Arriving on the sixth, he found the Governor ailing. Unless his health improved during the summer, said Dinwiddie, who was sixty-three, he would ask permission to go home. There was another and a sure indication that the old Scot was failing: He readily referred troublesome decisions to the young commander. When Washington rode away from the capital on June 10 he had more authority and responsibility than ever had been assigned him officially. As respected fundamental strategy, Dinwiddie had been compelled to reiterate, and Washington to agree, that Virginia must remain on the defensive in 1756 unless regulars and artillery could be made available by Loudoun. At the same time, regardless of the delays and supineness of adjoining Colonies, Virginia must do her part for her own people and, if possible, make her advanced settlements secure. Washington’s Regiment therefore was to be recruited to full strength by a draft; the chain of forts was to be completed along the whole of the frontier.
On his arrival at Winchester, Washington intended to remain for a few days and then proceed to Fort Cumberland, but it was July 1, or later, when once again he established temporary headquarters on Wills Creek. The Indians had made no new raids of any magnitude, though the prospect of their return at any time could not be disregarded. When Washington had heard the little there was to tell, he held a council on plans for the forts, and he put into effect the first of a series of orders for stiffer discipline. Then, shortly after July 13, he returned to Winchester, and, amid recurring alarms, proceeded to work on the three heavy tasks that were his lot—recruitment, discipline and fort building.
A draft was the positive phase of recruitment but it was not all that Washington had hoped it would be. Too much was expected of ignorant men. Low pay, fatiguing service and severe hardships were discouragements that vigilance could not overcome. As late as August 1, the total of Regiment, rangers and scouts was not more than 926 of an authorized 1500 and a needed 2000. Discipline remained a grim business for the Virginia commander. Building forts was hampered by lack of faith. Both Dinwiddie and Washington did what they could to execute the will of the General Assembly, but the Governor did not believe George had sufficient men to construct the forts, and the Colonel did not think they were worth building as the lawmakers planned them.
One of Washington’s substantial conclusions during the summer was that Fort Cumberland should not remain in the care and charge of Virginia, which was to centre her frontier defences on Winchester. Maryland was to build a new fort far to the east of Wills Creek; therefore, George could see no reason for maintaining troops and keeping stores on that remote stream. When Governor Sharpe was on the frontier during July, George explained this to the Maryland commander, who made no objection. Dinwiddie would not have it so. Cumberland, he said, was a “King’s fort” which could not be abandoned without the consent of the home government or of the new Commander-in-Chief for North America.
By orders “from home,” proclamation was made in Williamsburg on August 7 of the official declaration of war by Britain against France on May 17, 1756. This was repeated in Winchester on August 15 by the young soldier whose skirmish with a French youth in May 1754 had been the “first shot” of a war that was to shape the lines of empire on the richest of continents. With the leading citizens of the town, Washington marched three companies of the Virginia Regiment to the fort, where the declaration was read aloud. Toasts were drunk, the cannon thrice discharged, and three rounds of musketry fired.
Harder service it now promised to be. A few days before Washington announced the proclamation of war disaster had befallen the King’s arms in northern New York. After a winter of suffering and hunger, the survivors of three regiments and of detachments of the Royal Artillery had been trapped in three feeble forts at Oswego, subjected to serious casualties, and compelled to surrender. This was an unhappy introduction to the new Commander-in-Chief, Lord Loudoun, who had landed in New York on July 23.
In spite of pains taken to settle the estate of Lawrence Washington, the obscure provisions of his will had prevented this. What was worse, a controversy had arisen between Col. George Lee and the Washington brothers over the property to be divided between them and Lawrence’s widow, who had married Lee. At length, the parties to the dispute arranged to meet about the middle of September in an effort to reach a final adjustment. George asked to go to Alexandria if conditions on the frontier permitted. The Governor consenting, Washington arrived at Mount Vernon about September 15—and rode squarely into disappointment. Several of the men whose presence was necessary for the conference regarding the estate had been summoned to Williamsburg as Burgesses to attend a session the Governor had advanced in date because of the disaster at Oswego.
In spite of postponement that would necessitate another journey, a week at home, where John Augustine (“Jack”) Washington and his bride, Hannah Bushrod, now were residing, would have been delightfully acceptable had not George found himself involved in a matter that seemed to concern his character as a man and his reputation as an officer. For some months the Virginia Gazette had been publishing at irregular intervals a series of numbered articles, signed “L. & V.,” and printed under the heading “The Virginia Centinel.” “The Virginia Centinel. No. X” occupied nearly the whole of the front page of the Virginia Gazette of September 3, 1756. Bombast and pseudo-scholarship ran through it. Nowhere did the anonymous author give a hint of his identity unless it was in a line that suggested as author some militia officer who had been to Winchester the previous spring and had not been treated acceptably there. The profession of the soldier was declared noble, but “no profession in the world can secure from contempt and indignation a character made up of vice and debauchery.” The “Centinel” left no doubt that he was speaking of the Virginia Regiment, even if he did not call it by name: “. . . when nothing brave is so much as attempted, but very rarely, or by accident, or for necessary self defence; when men whose profession it is to endure hardships and dangers cautiously shun them, and suffer their country to be ravaged in their very neighborhood; then, certainly, censure cannot be silent; nor can the public receive much advantage from a Regiment of such dastardly debauchees.”
In his usual sensitiveness, Washington took every word of this to himself, but with one difference: Previously, he would have ridden to Williamsburg and returned his commission or he would have written that he would not continue to serve when he was subjected to such censure. This time, instead of resolving he would resign, he asked himself whether he should. Nor did he become so absorbed in the controversy or so depressed by it that he neglected other things. He wrote Austin a letter in which he answered the charges of “The Virginia Centinel.” This he forwarded to his half-brother and, with it, money to pay for its insertion in the Virginia Gazette if Austin considered publication desirable.
Still in uncertainty of mind concerning his probable action, Washington received at Winchester bad news from the southern part of the Virginia frontier. That region had been subjected to Indian raids at intervals since June 25, when a force of French and Indians under de Belestre had appeared at the palisade Ephraim Vause had erected near the Roanoke River. Its defenders were a handful of ill-disciplined rangers under newly commissioned Capt. John Smith, who negligently permitted men to leave the place until the French commander realized those who remained were too few to defend it. De Belestre closed in, and, when two of the garrison had been killed and five wounded, he offered the survivors terms, which they accepted. Now, late in September, came word of new raids in Augusta.
The situation was one that Washington felt he must examine in person; so he rode up the Shenandoah Valley to Vause’s Fort. The country was ideal for ambuscade, with neither settlers nor patrols to give warning of the presence of savages; but George’s good fortune attended him. He found Peter Hog at his post, but scarcely more than that could be said of the Captain. His company had dwindled to eighteen men, too few to do much work on the fort which was to be erected near the one Vause had built. Hog himself had degenerated as a commander during a long period of detached duty. His discipline was lax in some things and in others non-existent. The waste of manpower and feebleness of discipline shocked Washington.
MAP / 3
WASHINGTON’S TOUR OF
THE FRONTIER, 1756
The pass at Vause’s farm was of great importance, George saw, and if it were defended properly it would protect all of Bedford and the greater part of Augusta. His disgust with misuse of the position led him to explode later with: “They have built three forts here, and one of them, if no more, erected in my opinion in a very out-of-the-way place. This they call Fort Trial.” Washington continued southward, because he now resolved to make his inspection of the Virginia defences complete by going on to the forts in Halifax, next the North Carolina line. He found nothing to change his impression of the worthlessness of the militia and the inadequacy of the chain of feeble forts. Discontent, half-despair accumulated on the long, lonely road from Winchester to the North Carolina line. Militia were undependable; employment of them was wasteful; the Regiment was not strong enough, even when recruited fully, to do the work expected of it; there was censure and insinuation even in times of hardship and trial. At the southern end of the projected long line of forts, all these things had grown into an acute irritant.
With emotions confused and complicated, he wrote Dinwiddie:
I scorn to make unjust remarks on the behavior of the militia as much as I despise and condemn the persons who detract from mine and the character of the regiment . . . I only want to make the country sensible how ardently I have studied to promote her cause, and wish very sincerely my successor may fill my place more to their satisfaction in every respect than I have been able to do. I mentioned in my last to your Honor that I did not think a less number than 2,000 men would be sufficient to defend our extensive and much exposed frontier from the ravages of the enemy. I have not one reason yet to alter my opinion, but many to strengthen and confirm it. And I flatter myself the country will, when they know my determinations, be convinced that I have no sinister views, no vain motives of commanding a number of men, that urge me to recommend this number to your Honor, but that it proceeds from the knowledge I have acquired of the country, people, &c. to be defended.
In this state of mind Washington reversed his direction on October 10. He felt he had seen what there was to see, and all of it discouraging. On October 22 he rode into Winchester and found new distress there. Indians had resumed their raids on the South Branch and elsewhere; farmers’ appeals for help were reaching Winchester daily; the whole situation was so alarming, that Washington had to confess himself deeply anxious. Fortunately, the alarm was of brief duration.
The Virginia officers at Fort Cumberland did not see the article of the “Centinel” until October 5, while Washington was on his tour of inspection. They met the next day and sent Lieutenant Colonel Stephen a furious letter. The angry young Virginians served notice: “We are resolved to obey as officers no longer than the twentieth day of November next, unless we have as public satisfaction as the injury received.” That was serious. In several past crises the extreme utterance of others had led George to draw back. This time he perceived that what he had been tempted to do himself was dangerous when done by others. Cost what it might, he must keep the officers from leaving the service when their resignation would mean disintegration of the Regiment and further exposure of the Colony to attack. As soon as a few essential duties were performed, George hurried to Fort Cumberland and undertook to convince the officers that they had allowed too little time for the Governor, the Council or the Burgesses to give them “satisfaction.” He asked them to defer action until he could investigate and report. They assented, but they insisted they must have the thanks of the General Assembly and an avowal of disbelief in the charges of the “Centinel.” The alternative was set forth with deliberate sarcasm—that the Governor or the lawmakers must appoint in their place “a set of gentlemen who will more fully answer their and his expectation and perform that for their country which it seems their Governor, if not they, little hope for from a company of dastardly debauchees.”
Washington agreed that their appeal should be presented. To seek vindication and to transact an accumulation of business, he prepared to start for Williamsburg. On this mission, the Colonel had reached Alexandria when he received an extraordinary letter from Dinnwiddie. The Governor had been confined to his room and not been improved in body or in temper. He had taken offence at a reference Washington half casually had made to the arrival in Winchester of eleven Catawba Indians whose number might have been increased by the use of responsible guides. Dinwiddie for months had been humiliated by the failure of his efforts to procure substantial help from the southern Indians and doubtless had been shamed anew by the arrival of Andrew Lewis with a ludicrous reenforcement of seven Cherokee warriors and three squaws. Hit where he was sore, the Governor struck angrily at Washington.
Temper colored the whole of Dinwiddie’s letter. Most startling was a succession of brief, concluding sentences in which he said that the proposals concerning the future of Fort Cumberland had been reviewed by himself and the Council:
In consequence thereof, I hereby order you immediately to march 100 men to Fort Cumberland from the forces you have at Winchester, which Captain Mercer says is 160 men. You are to remain at Fort Cumberland and make the place as strong as you can, in case of an attack. You are to send out parties from the fort to observe the motions of the enemy if they should march over the Allegheny Mountains. Any stores at the fort not absolutely necessary for its defense you are to send . . . to Winchester. You are to order one of your subaltern officers (in whom you confide) to command at Winchester and to oversee the finishing of the fort building at that place. These orders I expect you will give due obedience to, and I am with respect, sir, your most humble servant. . . .
This was sharp, stern discipline for the young Colonel who was on his way to Williamsburg to tell the Governor that the officers at Fort Cumberland demanded they be replaced unless the attack on them by “The Virginia Centinel” was disavowed! Washington was astonished and stunned. To dispatch one hundred additional men to Fort Cumberland would leave Winchester undefended, the stores unprotected, and Fort Loudoun (as the defence at Winchester was now called) not only uncompleted but also exposed to the elements and to thieves who would carry off the building materials accumulated there. Of all the occasions on which Washington might have thought himself justified in throwing up his commission, this certainly was the most provoking and warrantable; but the effect on him of Dinwiddie’s criticisms was exactly the reverse. The risk to the “country” and to the work he had taken in hand cooled and calmed him.
He obviously had to be in the Valley and not at Williamsburg. Accordingly he made his arrangements to return to Winchester and then replied to Dinwiddie’s letter point by point. He apologized for what Dinwiddie had considered his “unmannerly” reference to the Indians’ guides. “[I] am sorry,” he wrote, “to find that this and my best endeavors of late meet with unfavorable constructions.” He went on: “What it proceeds from, I know not. If my open and disinterested way of writing and speaking has the air of pertness and freedom, I shall redress my error by acting reservedly, and shall take care to obey my orders without offering at more.” After a review of the other matters of which the Governor had complained, he returned to the proposal for the abandonment of Fort Loudoun, told Dinwiddie what this involved, and then wrote a final sentence that was apt to make the Governor reconsider: “So, to comply with my order (which I shall do literally if I can) not a man will be left [at Winchester] to secure the works or defend the King’s stores, which are almost wholly removed to that place.”
Three days later, November 27, Washington left Alexandria for Winchester and, on arrival, called immediately for a return of the troops in the Valley town. If Washington abandoned Winchester completely, he learned, he could not furnish the whole of the reenforcement ordered to Fort Cumberland. Wagons and flour for the transfer of the troops and their equipment to the Maryland post were not available immediately. Without disobedience of orders, time sufficed for an appeal to the Governor. George wrote deferentially and set forth the loss that would attend the evacuation of Winchester.
Dinwiddie and the Council had a change of heart when they learned reenforcement of Fort Cumberland would necessitate abandonment of the unfinished fort at Winchester. Washington received instructions December 15 to evacuate all the smaller forts except Waggener’s on the South Branch and to divide available men between the garrisons of Winchester and of Wills Creek, so that Fort Cumberland might be strengthened and Fort Loudoun still be held. This meant that Indian raiders could penetrate easily the abandoned area between the two main forts, but the danger to settlers during the winter season would not be great. It was less bad to take that risk than abandon Fort Loudoun and its supplies to plunderers. Washington had won a partial victory. Fort Loudoun had been saved.
In his letter ordering the abandonment of the stockades, the Governor had quoted a paragraph from a communication in which Lord Loudoun had said of the proposed evacuation of the small forts: “If [Colonel Washington] leaves any of the great quantity of stores behind, it will be very unfortunate; and he ought to consider that it must lie at his own door.” That was alarming. George felt that Loudoun had somehow been prejudiced against him. He could perceive that the General wrote in misconception of the facts, if not in ignorance of them; but misconception and ignorance are sources of prejudice, not cures of it. The recourse that occurred to George was to wait in person on the new Commander-in-Chief and present the reasons for what he had proposed. Washington pressed for information of the General’s arrival. Then, on December 20 or 21, Washington took all his wardrobe, his camp equipment, his horses and the puppy he had bought that month and set out for Fort Cumberland.
The weeks of waiting for the visit of Lord Loudoun to Virginia could not be for Washington a time of idleness even at Fort Cumberland in winter. After the Christmas holdiays, George had to find clothing for the half-naked troops, who had been expecting it since October, and had to submit to controversy with the Governor over the appointment of a Commissary. More serious was a mutiny on the South Branch. This was put down promptly and sternly. These unpleasant matters faced and endured, Washington turned to the preparation of a report to Loudoun on the condition of the Virginia forces and the situation on the frontier. He wrote this paper with much care because he intended to use it as an introduction to the new Commander-in-Chief, who had been compelled to defer plans for visiting Virginia and whom Washington wished to impress as a vigilant commander.
Washington began a covering letter to Loudoun’s senior aide, with the assertion that a British offensive, if practicable, was necessary: “Our all in a manner depends upon it. The French grow more and more formidable by their alliances, while our friendly Indians are deserting our interest. Our treasury is exhausting, and our country depopulating. . . .” He assured Loudoun that three thousand men could cut communications between Fort DuQuesne and the Lakes and, with artillery, could destroy the fort. The difficulties that weakened the Virginia Regiment and hampered its operations were the burden of the report.
Washington held to his purpose to find the earliest possible opportunity of “testifying” to the qualities of the man who could advance him quickly. When he learned Loudoun had called a conference of Governors to meet in Philadelphia, he sought and received Dinwiddie’s permission to attend. Washington reached the place of conference about February 21, 1757—only to find that the new Commander-in-Chief had not made his appearance. Pending that gratifying event, Washington had to make the most of such dull diversions as idle days in Philadelphia could offer in midwinter. At last on March 14, the guns of the Association Battery and of ships in the harbor announced Loudoun’s arrival. As the waiting Governors had become impatient, they sat down eagerly to confer with him and hear the little Loudoun had to say about his military plans. There were some ceremonials, but, in the main, there was solid discussion, which soon turned to the means by which the people could be aroused to support the war with vigor.
Washington found Lord Loudoun, a bachelor of fifty-two, stout and below middle height but strongly muscled and apparently fit for the field. The General had the marks of high station and good living and he displayed an interest in administration. From Loudoun’s senior aide, Washington soon learned the General had been much pleased with Washington’s report on the situation in Virginia. Loudoun doubtless was equally pleased when he met the young Virginian who succeeded in nothing more certainly than in winning the good-will of his seniors. George was not invited to all meetings of the conference, but he was called in March 20 when a choice was to be made concerning the forts to be held in western Virginia and the garrisons to be employed there.
The council of Governors sat with Lord Loudoun through March 23. Loudoun told the council virtually nothing concerning his plan of operations in the north, but he and the Governors agreed that no offensive could be undertaken in Pennsylvania or to the south during 1757. A defensive must be maintained there and particularly in South Carolina, where a French attack from Santo Domingo or from the Alabama fort in the Creek country was apprehended. Washington knew nothing of the situation in South Carolina and expressed no opinion of it. From his point of view, the single gratifying decision of the council was a minor one—that Maryland was to assume responsibility for Fort Cumberland.
Washington already regarded himself as a fatalist. He was disposed now to take a gloomy view of the future, in so far as his own military future was concerned; and when he reached Alexandria early in April he had added another to the long list of disappointments that had been his in pursuit of military fame. His initial command had been hampered by Mackay and then by defeat at Fort Necessity; Braddock had been good enough to promise advancement but had been killed; after George had been named Commander-in-Chief of Virginia troops under his second commission, first Dagworthy and then Sharpe had stood in his way; when Dagworthy had been eliminated and Sharpe had been won over to ask for him as second in command, Shirley had promised to give him that post—and then Shirley had been superseded; now Loudoun was favorable, but there was to be no offensive against the Ohio in 1757.
At Alexandria he found a letter in which Captain Mercer, commanding at Winchester, said that ninety-five Catawba Indians had arrived in the town. This presented possibilities of a sort that revived Washington. Perhaps these warriors could be used in an expedition towards Fort DuQuesne. In the transfer of Fort Cumberland to the custody of Maryland, someone must see that all Virginia property, except provisions, was removed to Winchester. Weakening of the Regiment in order to strengthen South Carolina must be resisted. Evacuation of Fort Cumberland would release some troops for garrisoning the stockades between that post and Winchester. These men must be posted wisely. Finally, the Governor had directed George to come to Williamsburg during the session of the General Assembly beginning April 14 and report on arrearages of pay. If immediate tasks were to be discharged, Washington must be off to the Valley.
Busy days followed. The Governor was as anxious to get a contingent for South Carolina on its way as George was to hold it. Transfer of Fort Cumberland involved delays as well as formalities. Much had to be done in anticipation of the coming of a larger force of Cherokees and Catawbas. Meantime, the French Indians were appearing again, almost under the stockade of Fort Cumberland, and waylaying small parties of men on the road. Officers at that fort were renewing their appeal for King’s commissions. George visited Wills Creek briefly and then started at his usual speed for Williamsburg. He was in Fredericksburg April 24 and by the twenty-seventh was in the capital.
Washington was receiving thirty shillings per diem pay and 2 per cent commission on all funds he handled for the troops. Dinwiddie regarded this as too high a rate compensation, but George now earnestly asked the Governor not to lower either pay or commission. It was not altogether a vain plea. The General Assembly heard Washington’s statement of the arrearages due the Regiment and gave him good-will and admiration; but members did not change the plan to entrust financial administration to the Governor nor did any of them prevail upon the Governor, if even they tried, to continue the commission of 2 per cent. Dinwiddie kept George’s salary at thirty shillings, agreed to provide for the men who attended his horses and allowed him a flat £200 per annum for his table and expenses.
The remonstrance of the officers was unavailing; relief and recognition must come from the Crown, not from Burgesses who were conscious of the Colony’s financial distress. They were well-inclined, if powerless, and as always, they were sociable. George accepted entertainment and gave it. Conferences came at last to an end. Washington completed all his business by May 17 but left the General Assembly still in dispute over the size of the forces to be employed for the operations to be undertaken that year and in 1758. Return was by Fredericksburg, to Alexandria and then to Winchester, which he reached May 24.
In Winchester and nearby Washington found a larger number of Indians than ever he had seen together previously. He could not escape the presence or the importunity of Cherokees, Catawbas, Nottaways and Tuscaroras. Negotiation, treaties, presents and promises had brought Washington more savages than he could employ advantageously while Virginia remained on the defensive. “They are,” said Washington, “the most insolent, most avaricious and most dissatisfied wretches I have ever had to deal with.”
The nuisance was immediate; the benefit in futuro; the danger that the Indians would march off in dudgeon could not be blinked. Responsibility of conciliating them was not long to be Washington’s. The home government had named Edmund Atkin Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Southern Colonies in recognition of a long report on the southern natives, written by Atkin. Atkin did nothing in haste and preferably did nothing at all. He had come to Williamsburg on April 9, but he resisted all prodding to go to Winchester. If the management of the Indians was the affair of Atkin, then George wanted to be relieved of the Indians and wished the new official to be present to look after them. Washington sent an express with a request that the Governor speed the agent, but it was not until June 2 that Atkin arrived and, after some diplomatic delays and pretended indifference, began a council with the savages. This was long and complicated. Atkin professed to act in superior knowledge of the Indians, but he did not impress Washington. It would be far better, the Colonel thought, if Virginia had a single agent of her own—Christopher Gist, for example—who would transact all business with the Indians.
Circumstance for some weeks saved Washington from the tedium of administrative routine. A delicate negotiation was that of determining the military relationship Washington was to bear to Col. John Stanwix of the Sixtieth Infantry, whom Loudoun had named to command five companies of regulars assigned to support Colonials in the defence of the western frontiers of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Washington took pains to inquire of the Governor: “If I should meet with anything from [Stanwix] at any time that may clash with your instructions to me, how I am to conduct myself in the affair[?]” The reply was: “You are to follow such orders [as] Colonel Stanwix may send you from time to time, without any regard to any orders you may have received from me.”
This answer referred specifically to a situation that developed in mid-June. When Washington returned to Winchester from Williamsburg he found that several raids to the west had been undertaken by the Virginians and their Indian allies. One such thrust had been made by the natives who had brought in four scalps and two prisoners. Major Lewis later led toward the Ohio a scalping party of considerable size, but, as he had not been able to prevail on the savages to take more than eight days’ provisions with them, he soon was back with no scalps on any warrior’s belt. Two parties remained out, one with whom Capt. Robert Spotswood had started in the direction of Fort DuQuesne, and another under Lieut. James Baker, who had taken fifteen Indians and five white men toward Logstown.
An express on June 12 brought news that Baker had returned on the ninth with five French scalps and one French prisoner. That left only Spotswood and his party afield. Washington was beginning to feel concern for them when, during the night of June 15/16, an express rode into town with this dispatch:
Sir,
Six Cherokee Indians who just now came from Fort DuQuesne, say that six days ago they saw a large body of troops march from that garrison with a number of wagons and a train of artillery, and by their route, must intend an attack on this garrison.
I am, sir, your most humble servant,
JNO. DAGWORTHY.
The Indians said they had heard a great gun fired near the battlefield of Monongahela. The French, according to the Cherokees, had “numbers of wheeled carriages and men innumerable and had marched two days before they quit the Monongahela waters.” Washington credited the news—called for a council of all the commissioned officers then in Winchester. Unanimously the council voted to recall the garrisons to Winchester and hold them there, working on the fort, till more was known about the French advance.
The orders issued by Washington during the next few hours showed that he was acquiring experience. Washington sent Dagworthy an account of the steps that had been taken. “I have no doubt that a very considerable force will be with you in a very short time,” he added. For three days thereafter, if George had further word from Fort Cumberland, it merely repeated rumor and echoed suspense.
On the twenty-first Washington received a somewhat embarrassed letter from Dagworthy. Other Indians had arrived from the vicinity of Fort DuQuesne and asserted that previous reports of a French advance with artillery and wagons were untrue. A large scouting party had left the Ohio and was moving in the direction of Fort Cumberland, but the tale about vehicles and heavy guns was the imagining of badly scared young warriors who had hurried eastward after a glimpse of the enemy.
These more experienced natives of the second party Dagworthy sent to Winchester in order that the Virginians might question them. Washington did so and concluded that they had not actually been close to Fort DuQuesne but that they had been on the trail of a considerable force of French and Indians who were moving towards the English settlements. These enemies had no artillery and they were following a route they recently had been employing for all their raids, whether against Virginia, Maryland or Pennsylvania. Dagworthy’s first alarm might have been due to the mistakes of an interpreter; but there still was sufficient doubt about the whole expedition to justify the retention for a time of the militia who were arriving.
By June 24 suspense was diminished. Thereafter, Washington observed hopefully the indications that the French and Indians from Fort DuQuesne, on reaching the English settlements, had divided into separate scalping parties which did comparatively little damage. At the end of the first week in July there still were signs of hostile savages; but by mid-July Washington could report, “we are pretty peaceable.”
The last echo of Captain Dagworthy’s false alarm was not pleasant to the ears of Virginians. If the men at Winchester and on the South Branch could mock the Marylanders for creating foes through tales told by friends, Dagworthy’s men soon could say that Washington’s advisers would make enemies by misusing friends. In blundering confidence that he knew how to punish as well as reward the savages, Atkin locked up ten of them for some infraction and thereby created a turmoil so serious that Washington had to act quickly to placate the offended natives before they set out in wrath for their own country.
While doing what he could to counteract the mistakes of Atkin, the Colonel had the doleful duty of relieving of command one of his earliest officers. Captain Hog had failed to maintain discipline and to build economically a properly situated fort at Vause’s. There was no alternative to getting rid of him. After Hog was sent home, the supervision of the southern end of the western defences was placed in the competent hands of Lewis. Some shifts were made, also, in the disposition of the detached companies, but the greatest change was the absence of Stephen in South Carolina. Frontier garrison duty had not carried him, as it had Hog, in a descent to incompetence; but where Stephen was, trouble was. His acceptance of Dagworthy’s seniority never had been explained, though Stephen’s letters often contained sharp criticisms of the Marylander. It was against Stephen, however unjustly, that some of the charges of drunkenness and immorality at Fort Cumberland had been directed. He had been loyal to Washington, but Washington found, after resuming command of all his troops, that Stephen so often had given orders contrary to those he had received that, said Washington, “it will be with great difficulty, if it is even possible, to extricate the officers and myself from the dilemma and trouble they have occasioned.”
These occurrences were incidental to the main task, rebuilding the Virginia Regiment in conformity to the new legislation of the General Assembly. The bill that finally met with the Burgesses’ approval authorized a total force of 1272, organized into twelve companies. Two of those to be recruited, in addition to two already in existence, could be dispatched to South Carolina if the commanding officer of His Majesty’s forces in North America thought necessary. One company was to garrison the fort in the Cherokee country; the remaining seven were to be employed for the general defence of the Colony. Furthermore, three companies of rangers, each of one hundred men, were to be enlisted for the protection of the southwestern counties.
A regimental roster continuously below authorized strength represented the principal failure of an exasperating year on the defensive. Washington did not blame himself for this weakness, nor did his superiors charge him with it. Washington had distress, also, over Captain Spotswood and his scouts, soldiers who by now had been given up as lost after their failure to return from their raid towards Logstown. Another distress was over the continuing slow progress of work on Fort Loudoun. Overtopping all the unhappiness of the service was the feeling of Washington that he had been treated unfairly by the Governor, that he and his officers had been maligned, and that they had been denied the right they believed they had earned of inclusion in the regular establishment.
Such were the events of the early summer of 1757; such the balance of satisfaction and disappointment, of compensation and distress—the Regiment still below strength, Spotswood dead, Stephen agreeably dispatched to South Carolina, Fort Loudoun taking shape slowly, Dagworthy somewhat discredited, Dinwiddie still quick to argue, but sick, anxious, and soon to pass off the stage. Washington himself was depressed and perhaps bored, but he was not disheartened. Pride, anticipation and experience were echoed in a letter of instruction he wrote the Captains who were about to take their companies to the more remote forts. “. . . devote some part of your leisure hours to the study of your profession, a knowledge in which cannot be attained without application; nor any merit or applause to be achieved without a certain knowledge thereof. Discipline is the soul of an army.”
Before one perplexity vanished another mocked. About August 1 George developed a mild dysentery, which he ignored to the extent that he did not reduce his activities in the least. Among compelling personal duties was that of going to Alexandria for another attempt at a settlement of Lawrence’s estate. He set out on August 4 and, on arrival, found few questions to be discussed. The books were in order. When all the adjustments with Lee had been made there was no credit to Washington to offset the debts of £125 12s. 9d. contracted in 1753-55 and represented by purchases from the estate. This sum he duly paid. A fine crop of tobacco was growing on the land and was especially encouraging because Washington had decided that he would undertake to raise the best leaf in considerable quantities. From his salary and allowances he had saved money with which he soon was to buy five hundred additional acres on Dogue Run for £350, and he had invested £300 in additional slaves from November 1756 through May 1757. Thus would he have more “hands” for more work. Nothing specific could be undertaken immediately for the repair and furnishing of Mount Vernon, but much had to be pondered and planned, doubtless with the assistance of Jack Washington and his young wife. All business was completed as far as it could be by the beginning of the last week in August, when Washington went back to Winchester.
Washington had not made more than his initial approach to the perplexities usual to his life at that place when a messenger brought sad news: On September 3 death had taken Colonel Fairfax, the man who had done more than any other to counsel and advance young George Washington. Fairfax had transferred to George the moral assistance he first had given to Lawrence. He could not have been kinder to the son-in-law than to the dead man’s younger brother. From Fairfax George had learned more of the arts of society than from any other person except Lawrence. It was, therefore, as much a personal duty as it was a neighborly obligation to ride over the mountain to Colonel Fairfax’s formal funeral later in the month, even though the continuance of the bloody flux made the journey difficult and painful.
When the last tribute had been paid to Fairfax, Washington hurried back to the Valley. Those days between the news of the Colonel’s death and the time of the obsequies had been among the unhappiest of Washington’s whole period of command. About September 14 he received a letter written by William Peachey, one of the captains of the Regiment who had been discharged when the number of officers had been reduced. Peachey described with great particularity how Charles Carter had quoted William Claiborne as saying Richard Corbin had quoted Peachey as affirming in the spring of 1756, when sent to Williamsburg for aid, “that the whole business at that time was to execute a scheme of [Washington’s] to cause the Assembly to levy largely both in money and men, and that there was not an Indian in that neighborhood, that the frontiers or even Winchester and the adjacent county did not appear to be in any more danger at that time than any other. . . .” Peachey reported that this “piece of deceit or imposition of yours (as they term it) has lessened the Governor’s and some of the leading men’s esteem for you.”
In Washington’s eyes few things could be so calamitous to him as to lose the good opinion of the outstanding men of the Colony. He was conscious that he had lost favor with Dinwiddie, and he was inclined to believe that Corbin had spoken as Claiborne and Carter had reported. For this reason he wanted to know, first of all, whether the Governor had heard the accusation and knew its source. On the seventeenth George copied in a letter to Dinwiddie what Peachey had written and then asked: “I should take it infinitely kind if your Honor would please to inform me whether a report of this nature was ever made to you, and, in that case, who was the author of it?” With characteristic candor he admitted that he might have made military mistakes through lack of experience. “I think it would be more generous,” he said, “to charge me with my faults, and let me stand or fall according to the evidence, than to stigmatize me behind my back.”
Now returned from Fairfax’s funeral, Washington wrestled over the meaning of Governor Dinwiddie’s reply to this letter. The Governor said: “I would gladly hope there is no truth in it. I never heard of it before, nor did I ever conceive you’d have sent down any alarms without proper foundation. However, I shall show it to Col. Corbin when he comes to town, but I’d advise you not to credit every idle story you hear, for if I was to notice reports of different kinds, I should be constantly perplexed. My conduct to you from the beginning was always friendly, but you know I had good reason to suspect you of ingratitude, which I am convinced your own conscience and reflection must allow I had reason to be angry, but this I endeavor to forget; but I can’t think Col. Corbin guilty of what is reported. However as I’ve his Majesty’s leave to go for England, [I] propose leaving this November, and I wish my successor may show you as much friendship as I’ve done.”
This letter caused Washington as much pain as it relieved. George answered almost despairingly: “I do not know that I ever gave your Honor cause to suspect me of ingratitude, a crime I detest and would most carefully avoid. If an open, disinterested behavior carries offence, I may have offended, because I have always laid it down as a maxim to represent facts freely and impartially, but no more to others than I have to you, sir. If instances of my ungrateful behavior had been particularized, I would have answered to them. But I have long been convinced that my actions and their motives have been maliciously aggravated.”
There the matter had unhappily to rest, but if Dinwiddie soon was to leave, Washington felt it was desirable to go to Williamsburg and to settle accounts. The Colonel asked permission to do this, but the Governor snappishly met his request with a refusal. Rebuffed, George had to await a more favorable time, when the Governor’s humor was better or his successor had come. How soon that might be, George could not guess. He certainly did not anticipate the reality—that he had written the last words he ever was to address to “His Honor.” It was to be regretted that the last months of Dinwiddie’s relations with Washington were clouded with misunderstanding, after almost four years of pleasant association. Part of the final ill-feeling perhaps had its origin in Dinwiddie’s illness that shook his judgment and his temper. Had he recovered, he might have been reconciled.
At the same time, a certain complaint and contention ran through Washington’s letters of the summer of 1757 and for the same reason that Dinwiddie was bad-tempered: he was sick. The dysentery persisted relentlessly and reduced his strength day by day. About November 1 this bloody flux became more violent. Soon George was so weak that he scarcely could walk. On the seventh he was in such violent pain that the physicians had to give him warning: If he did not suspend all activity and seek a “change of air,” they could not be responsible for him; and even if he went away, he could not hope for early recovery. That decided him. Without attempting to write either Dinwiddie or Colonel Stanwix, he turned over the command to Captain Stewart, instructed that officer to notify his superiors of his illness and started for Alexandria.
On arrival in Alexandria, Colonel Washington went to the home of John Carlyle and there he remained long enough to consult Dr. Charles Green. For a time, the patient grew worse; then, after he went to Mount Vernon, he gained slightly in his battle with his malady. At Christmas, he was strong enough to transact some personal business, and subsequent to New Year’s Day he talked of going to Williamsburg, though at least one friendly neighbor discouraged the effort.
Neither pride nor physic, neither resilience nor resolution sufficed to break the grip of Washington’s affliction. The bloody flux ceased, only to return again. Some indications of “decay,” as the Colonials termed consumption, were apparent. With the coming of March, Washington grew desperate. Temporarily he would put himself under a strict regimen; when he had done his utmost, he would go to Williamsburg and consult the best physicians there. “. . . My constitution is certainly greatly impaired,” he told Colonel Stanwix. It might be necessary for him not only to resign but also, as he put it, to “retire from all public business.”
Painfully he set out March 5, 1758, and, in contrast to his usual galloping speed, rode slowly southward. He reached Williamsburg and consulted Dr. John Amson. This physician’s long experience apparently convinced him that George’s fears were unfounded and that cure was near. Assurance to this effect had immediate result. Washington almost overnight cast off thought of death and proceeded to a new reconnaissance. He rode from Williamsburg to the White House, home of Martha Dandridge Custis, widow of Daniel Parke Custis.
