The Passing Of The French Peril
The great pile of the Appalachian peaks was not the only barrier which
held back the settler with his plough and his rifle from following the
trader's tinkling caravans into the valleys beyond. Over the hills the
French were lords of the land. The frontiersman had already felt their
enmity through the torch and tomahawk of their savage allies. By his own
strength alone he could not cope with the power entrenched beyond the
hills; so he halted. But that power, by its unachievable desire to be
overlord of two hemispheres, was itself to precipitate events which
would open the westward road.
The recurring hour in the cycle of history, when the issue of Autocracy
against Democracy cleaves the world, struck for the men of the
eighteenth century as the second half of that century dawned. In our own
day, happily, that issue has been perceived by the rank and file of the
people. In those darker days, as France and England grappled in that
conflict of systems which culminated in the Seven Years' War, the
fundamental principles at stake were clear to only a handful of thinking
men.
But abstractions, whether clear or obscure, do not cause ambassadors to
demand their passports. The declaration of war awaits the overt act.
Behold, then, how great a matter is kindled by a little fire! The casus
belli between France and England in the Seven Years' War--the war which
humbled France in Europe and lost her India and Canada--had to do with a
small log fort built by a few Virginians in 1754 at the Forks of the
Ohio River and wrested from them in the same year by a company of
Frenchmen from Canada.
The French claimed the valley of the Ohio as their territory; the
English claimed it as theirs. The dispute was of long standing. The
French claim was based on discovery; the English claim, on the
sea-to-sea charters of Virginia and other colonies and on treaties with
the Six Nations. The French refused to admit the right of the Six
Nations to dispose of the territory. The English were inclined to
maintain the validity of their treaties with the Indians. Especially was
Virginia so inclined, for a large share of the Ohio lay within her
chartered domain.
The quarrel had entered its acute phase in 1749, when both the rival
claimants took action to assert their sovereignty. The Governor of
Canada sent an envoy, Céloron de Blainville, with soldiers, to take
formal possession of the Ohio for the King of France. In the same year
the English organized in Virginia the Ohio Company for the colonization
of the same country; and summoned Christopher Gist, explorer, trader,
and guide, from his home on the Yadkin and dispatched him to survey the
land.
Then appeared on the scene that extraordinary man, Robert Dinwiddie,
Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, erstwhile citizen of Glasgow. His
correspondence from Virginia during his seven years' tenure of office
(1751-58) depicts the man with a vividness surpassing paint. He was as
honest as the day--as honest as he was fearless and fussy. But he had no
patience; he wanted things done and done at once, and his way was the
way to do them. People who did not think as he thought didn't think at
all. On this drastic premise he went to work. There was of course
continuous friction between him and the House of Burgesses. Dinwiddie
had all a Scot's native talent for sarcasm. His letters, his addresses,
perhaps in particular his addresses to the House, bristled with
satirical thrusts at his opponents. If he had spelled out in full all
the words he was so eager to write, he would have been obliged to lessen
his output; so he used a shorthand system of his own, peculiar enough to
be remarkable even though abbreviations were the rule in that day. Even
the dignity of Kings he sacrificed to speed, and we find "His Majesty"
abbreviated to "H M'y"; yet a smaller luminary known as "His Honor"
fares better, losing only the last letter--"His Hono." "Ho." stands for
"house" and "yt" for "that," "what," "it," and "anything else," as
convenient. Many of his letters wind up with "I am ve'y much fatig'd."
We know that he must have been!
It was a formidable task that confronted Dinwiddie--to possess and
defend the Ohio. Christopher Gist returned in 1751, having surveyed the
valley for the Ohio Company as far as the Scioto and Miami rivers, and
in the following year the survey was ratified by the Indians. The
Company's men were busy blazing trails through the territory and
building fortified posts. But the French dominated the territory. They
had built and occupied with troops Fort Le Bœuf on French Creek, a
stream flowing into the Allegheny. We may imagine Dinwiddie's rage at
this violation of British soil by French soldiers and how he must have
sputtered to the young George Washington, when he summoned that officer
and made him the bearer of a letter to the French commander at Fort Le
Bœuf, to demand that French troops be at once withdrawn from the Ohio.
Washington made the journey to Fort Le Bœuf in December, 1753, but the
mission of course proved fruitless. Dinwiddie then wrote to London
urging that a force be sent over to help the colonies maintain their
rights and, under orders from the Crown, suggested by himself, he wrote
to the governors of all the other colonies to join with Virginia in
raising troops to settle the ownership of the disputed territory. From
Governor Dobbs of North Carolina he received an immediate response. By
means of logic, sarcasm, and the entire force of his prerogatives,
Dinwiddie secured from his own balking Assembly £10,000 with which to
raise troops. From Maryland he obtained nothing. There were three
prominent Marylanders in the Ohio Company, but--or because of this--the
Maryland Assembly voted down the measure for a military appropriation.
On June 18, 1754, Dinwiddie wrote, with unusually full spelling for him:
I am perswaded had His Majesty's Com'ds to the other Colonies been duely
obey'd, and the necessary Assistance given by them, the Fr. wou'd have
long ago have been oblig'd entirely to have evacuated their usurp'd
Possession of the King's Lands, instead of w'ch they are daily becoming
more formidable, whilst every Gov't except No. Caro. has amus'd me with
Expectations that have proved fruitless, and at length refuse to give
any Supply, unless in such a manner as must render it ineffectual.
This saddened mood with its deliberate penmanship did not last long.
Presently Dinwiddie was making a Round Robin of himself in another
series of letters to Governors, Councilors, and Assemblymen, frantically
beseeching them for "H. M'y's hono." and their own, and, if not, for
"post'r'ty," to rise against the cruel French whose Indians were
harrying the borders again and "Basely, like Virmin, stealing and
carrying off the helpless infant"--as nice a simile, by the way, as any
Sheridan ever put into the mouth of Mrs. Malaprop.
Dinwiddie saw his desires thwarted on every hand by the selfish spirit
of localism and jealousy which was more rife in America in those days
than it is today. Though the phrase "capitalistic war" had not yet been
coined, the great issues of English civilization on this continent were
befogged, for the majority in the colonies, by the trivial fact that the
shareholders in the Ohio Company stood to win by a vigorous prosecution
of the war and to lose if it were not prosecuted at all. The irascible
Governor, however, proceeded with such men and means as he could obtain.
And now in the summer of 1754 came the "overt act" which precipitated
the inevitable war. The key to the valley of the Ohio was the tongue of
land at the Forks, where the Allegheny and the Monongahela join their
waters in the Beautiful River. This site--today Pittsburgh--if occupied
and held by either nation would give that nation the command of the
Ohio. Occupied it was for a brief hour by a small party of Virginians,
under Captain William Trent; but no sooner had they erected on the spot
a crude fort than the French descended upon them. What happened then all
the world knows: how the French built on the captured site their great
Fort Duquesne; how George Washington with an armed force, sent by
Dinwiddie to recapture the place, encountered French and Indians at
Great Meadows and built Fort Necessity, which he was compelled to
surrender; how in the next year (1755) General Braddock arrived from
across the sea and set out to take Fort Duquesne, only to meet on the
way the disaster called "Braddock's Defeat"; and how, before another
year had passed, the Seven Years' War was raging in Europe, and England
was allied with the enemies of France.
From the midst of the debacle of Braddock's defeat rises the figure of
the young Washington. Twenty-three he was then, tall and spare and
hardbodied from a life spent largely in the open. When Braddock fell,
this Washington appeared. Reckless of the enemy's bullets, which spanged
about him and pierced his clothes, he dashed up and down the lines in an
effort to rally the panic-stricken redcoats. He was too late to save the
day, but not to save a remnant of the army and bring out his own
Virginians in good order. Whether among the stay-at-homes and voters of
credits there were some who would have ascribed Washington's conduct on
that day to the fact that his brothers were large shareholders in the
Ohio Company and that Fort Duquesne was their personal property or
"private interest," history does not say. We may suppose so.
North Carolina, the one colony which had not "amus'd" the Governor of
Virginia "with Expectations that proved fruitless," had voted £12,000
for the war and had raised two companies of troops. One of these, under
Edward Brice Dobbs, son of Governor Dobbs, marched with Braddock; and in
that company as wagoner went Daniel Boone, then in his twenty-second
year. Of Boone's part in Braddock's campaign nothing more is recorded
save that on the march he made friends with John Findlay, the trader,
his future guide into Kentucky; and that, on the day of the defeat, when
his wagons were surrounded, he escaped by slashing the harness, leaping
on the back of one of his horses, and dashing into the forest.
Meanwhile the southern tribes along the border were comparatively quiet.
That they well knew a colossal struggle between the two white races was
pending and were predisposed to ally themselves with the stronger is not
to be doubted. French influence had long been sifting through the
formidable Cherokee nation, which still, however, held true in the main
to its treaties with the English. It was the policy of the Governors of
Virginia and North Carolina to induce the Cherokees to enter strongly
into the war as allies of the English. Their efforts came to nothing
chiefly because of the purely local and suicidal Indian policy of
Governor Glen of South Carolina. There had been some dispute between
Glen and Dinwiddie as to the right of Virginia to trade with the
Cherokees; and Glen had sent to the tribes letters calculated to sow
distrust of all other aspirants for Indian favor, even promising that
certain settlers in the Back Country of North Carolina should be removed
and their holdings restored to the Indians. These letters caused great
indignation in North Carolina, when they came to light, and had the
worst possible effect upon Indian relations. The Indians now inclined
their ear to the French who, though fewer than the English, were at
least united in purpose.
Governor Glen took this inauspicious moment to hold high festival with
the Cherokees. It was the last year of his administration and apparently
he hoped to win promotion to some higher post by showing his
achievements for the fur trade and in the matter of new land acquired.
He plied the Cherokees with drink and induced them to make formal
submission and to cede all their lands to the Crown. When the chiefs
recovered their sobriety, they were filled with rage at what had been
done, and they remembered how the French had told them that the English
intended to make slaves of all the Indians and to steal their lands. The
situation was complicated by another incident. Several Cherokee warriors
returning from the Ohio, whither they had gone to fight for the British,
were slain by frontiersmen. The tribe, in accordance with existing
agreements, applied to Virginia for redress--but received none.
There was thus plenty of powder for an explosion. Governor Lyttleton,
Glen's successor, at last flung the torch into the magazine. He seized,
as hostages, a number of friendly chiefs who were coming to Charleston
to offer tokens of good will and forced them to march under guard on a
military tour which the Governor was making (1759) with intent to
overawe the savages. When this expedition reached Prince George, on the
upper waters of the Savannah, the Indian hostages were confined within
the fort; and the Governor, satisfied with the result of his maneuver
departed south for Charleston. Then followed a tragedy. Some Indian
friends of the imprisoned chiefs attacked the fort, and the commander, a
popular young officer, was treacherously killed during a parley. The
infuriated frontiersmen within the fort fell upon the hostages and slew
them all--twenty-six chiefs--and the Indian war was on.
If all were to be told of the struggle which followed in the Back
Country, the story could not be contained in this book. Many brave and
resourceful men went out against the savages. We can afford only a
passing glance at one of them. Hugh Waddell of North Carolina was the
most brilliant of all the frontier fighters in that war. He was a young
Ulsterman from County Down, a born soldier, with a special genius for
fighting Indians, although he did not grow up on the border, for he
arrived in North Carolina in 1753, at the age of nineteen. He was
appointed by Governor Dobbs to command the second company which North
Carolina had raised for the war, a force of 450 rangers to protect the
border counties; and he presently became the most conspicuous military
figure in the colony. As to his personality, we have only a few meager
details, with a portrait that suggests plainly enough those qualities of
boldness and craft which characterized his tactics. Governor Dobbs
appears to have had a special love towards Hugh, whose family he had
known in Ireland, for an undercurrent of almost fatherly pride is to be
found in the old Governor's reports to the Assembly concerning Waddell's
exploits.
The terror raged for nearly three years. Cabins and fields were burned,
and women and children were slaughtered or dragged away captives. Not
only did immigration cease but many hardy settlers fled from the
country. At length, after horrors indescribable and great toll of life,
the Cherokees gave up the struggle. Their towns were invaded and laid
waste by imperial and colonial troops, and they could do nothing but
make peace. In 1761 they signed a treaty with the English to hold "while
rivers flow and grasses grow and sun and moon endure."
In the previous year (1760) the imperial war had run its course in
America. New France lay prostrate, and the English were supreme not only
on the Ohio but on the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Louisbourg,
Quebec, Montreal, Oswego, Niagara, Duquesne, Detroit--all were in
English hands.
Hugh Waddell and his rangers, besides serving with distinction in the
Indian war, had taken part in the capture of Fort Duquesne. This feat
had been accomplished in 1758 by an expedition under General Forbes. The
troops made a terrible march over a new route, cutting a road as they
went. It was November when they approached their objective. The wastes
of snow and their diminished supplies caused such depression among the
men that the officers called a halt to discuss whether or not to proceed
toward Fort Duquesne, where they believed the French to be concentrated
in force. Extravagant sums in guineas were named as suitable reward for
any man who would stalk and catch a French Indian and learn from him the
real conditions inside the fort. The honor, if not the guineas, fell to
John Rogers, one of Waddell's rangers. From the Indian it was learned
that the French had already gone, leaving behind only a few of their
number. As the English drew near, they found that the garrison had blown
up the magazine, set fire to the fort, and made off.
Thus, while New France was already tottering, but nearly two years
before the final capitulation at Montreal, the English again became
masters of the Ohio Company's land--masters of the Forks of the Ohio.
This time they were there to stay. Where the walls of Fort Duquesne had
crumbled in the fire Fort Pitt was to rise, proudly bearing the name of
England's Great Commoner who had directed English arms to victory on
three continents.
With France expelled and the Indians deprived of their white allies, the
westward path lay open to the pioneers, even though the red man himself
would rise again and again in vain endeavor to bar the way. So a new era
begins, the era of exploration for definite purpose, the era of
commonwealth building. In entering on it, we part with the earliest
pioneer--the trader, who first opened the road for both the lone home
seeker and the great land company. He dwindles now to the mere barterer
and so--save for a few chance glimpses--slips out of sight, for his
brave days as Imperial Scout are done.