A BLOOD-RED FRONTIER
There is no truer picture of the dark days of 1755-56 along the
frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia than that presented in the
correspondence of Washington at this time. A great burden fell upon his
young shoulders with the failure of the campaigns of 1755. Though far
from being at fault, he suffered greatly through the faults and failures
of others. The British army had come and had been routed. Now, after
such a victory as the Indians had never dreamed possible, the Virginia
and Pennsylvania frontiers, five hundred miles in length, lay helpless
before the bands of bold marauders drunk with the blood of Braddock's
slain.
The young colonel of the remnant of the Virginia Regiment took up the
difficult task of defending the southern frontier as readily as though a
quiet, happy life on his rich farms was an alternative as impossible as
alluring. But perhaps a bleeding border-land never in the world needed a
twenty-three year old lad more than Virginia now needed her young son. A
flood-tide of murder and pillage swept over the Alleghenies. The raids
of the savages brought the people to their senses, as the most terrible
of tales came in from the frontier. But soon the question arose, "Where
is the frontier?" The great track Braddock had opened for the conquest
of the Ohio valley became the pathway of his conquerors, and soon Fort
Cumberland, the frontier post, was far in the enemies' country. The
Indians soon found Burd's road on the summit of the Alleghenies and
poured over it by Raystown toward Carlisle and Shippensburg. Each day
brought the line of settlements nearer and nearer the populous portions
of Virginia and Pennsylvania, until Winchester became an endangered
outpost and fears were entertained for Lancaster and York. Hundreds now
who had refused the despairing Braddock horses and wagons saw their
wives and children murdered and their homesteads burned to the ground.
Whether Dunbar did right or wrong in hurrying back to Virginia, it was a
bitter day for Virginia and Pennsylvania. When his army hastened from
the frontier, it became the prey of the foes whose appetite that army
had whetted. Yet Shirley, reconsidering his former scheme, ordered
Dunbar to New York. After drawing the full fire of the French and
Indians upon Virginia and Pennsylvania, this army was sent to New York.
Looking backward, with the stern years 1775-82 in mind, it is easy to
see that then, in 1755, Pennsylvania and Virginia were to be put through
a hard school for a glorious purpose. They were to be trained in the art
of war. Of it they had known practically nothing. They had no effective
militia. Of military ethics they had no dream. They knew not what
obedience meant and could not understand delegated authority. Their
liberty was license or nothing. Of the power of organization,
concentration, discipline, routine, and method they were almost as
ignorant as their redskinned enemies. Although the men of New England
had not been given such great obstacles to overcome, it is undoubtedly
true that their militia was far more adequate than anything of which
Pennsylvania or Virginia knew, at least until 1758.[43] And yet Braddock
died cursing his regulars and extolling the colonials!
Washington was elected commander-in-chief in Virginia on his own
dignified terms; the army was increased to sixteen companies and L40,000
were voted for general defense. By October the young commander was at
Winchester, where he faced a situation desperate and appalling. The
country-side was terror-stricken, and few could be found even for
defense; many chose "to die with their wives and families." The few
score men who attempted to stem the tide of retreat were almost
powerless. "No orders are obeyed," Washington wrote Dinwiddie, "but such
as a party of soldiers, or my own drawn sword enforces." Such was the
frenzy of the retreat of the frontier population that threats were made
"to blow out the brains" of all in authority who opposed them. But the
young commander continued undaunted. He impressed men and horses and
wagons, and sent them hurrying for flour and musket-balls and flints; he
compelled men to erect little fortresses to which the people might flee.
Not the least of his trials--undoubtedly the most discouraging--was the
faithlessness of the troops sent out by Governor Dinwiddie upon the
reeking frontier. Many of them were themselves panic-stricken and fled
back with the rabble. The whole militia regime was inadequate; there was
no authority of sufficient weight vested in the commanding officers to
enable them to deal even with insolence, much less desertion. "I must
assume the freedom," Washington wrote the governor, "to express some
surprise, that we alone should be so tenacious of our liberty as not to
invest a power, where interest and policy so unanswerably demand it....
Do we not know, that every nation under the sun finds its account
therein, and that, without it, no order or regularity can be observed?
Why then should it be expected from us, who are all young and
inexperienced, to govern and keep up a proper spirit of discipline
without laws, when the best and most experienced can scarcely do it with
them?"
As the winter of 1755-6 approached, the Indian atrocities ceased and for
a few months there was quiet. But by early spring the raids were renewed
with merciless regularity. Every day brought a new tale of murder and
pillage; and very soon every road was filled with fugitives "bringing to
Winchester fresh dismay."
With his few men this first hero of Winchester (who by the way was at
his post, not "twenty miles away") was again straining every nerve that
Virginia might not lose the great stretch of beautiful country west of
the Blue Ridge. "The supplicating tears of women and moving petitions
of the men, melt me into such deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if
I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the
butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease."
Perhaps the vacillating Dinwiddie threw this letter down as too ardent a
one for a military hand to pen; if so Edward Everett has raised it aloft
to show his thrilled audiences "the whole man" Washington. "The
inhabitants are removing daily," he again wrote--"... in a short time
will leave this country as desolate as Hampshire." To such a degree were
the people terrified that secret meetings were held where leaders openly
spoke of making terms with the French and Indians by renouncing all
claims to the West--no less traitors to the best good of the colonies
than those who celebrated over Braddock's defeat.[44]
The campaign of 1756, as conducted by Shirley, contained no hope of
relief for Pennsylvania or Virginia; "so much am I kept in the dark,"
Washington exclaimed, "that I do not know whether to prepare for the
offensive or defensive; yet what might be absolutely necessary in the
one, would be quite useless in the other." He well knew a determined
stroke at Fort Duquesne, "a floodgate to open ruin and woe," was the
only hope of the southern and central colonies. In the meantime he led a
desperately exasperating life attempting to hold the frontier with his
tatterdemalion army by following Pennsylvania's example of building a
line of forts to defend the country. There was no destitution or
distress of which he did not know; at times he was begging for blankets
to cover his naked soldiers, and again for shoes and shirts; there were
few guns in a state of repair and at times in days of danger hundreds
flocked to him who could neither be fed nor armed. His life must have
been known to Lord Fairfax who wrote in the following strain: "Such a
medley of undisciplined militia must create you various troubles, but
having Caesar's Commentaries and perhaps Quintus Curtius, you have
therein read of greater fatigues, murmurings, mutinies, and defections,
than will probably come to your share." The fact is, in these days
there was no officer's duty with which Washington was not acquainted. He
supervised the building of forts, the transportation of stores and guns
and ammunition, here reprimanding a coarse mountaineer for profanity,
there leading the scouts as they threshed a mountain for lurking
Delawares; he personally hurried off wagons to endangered outposts with
flour and powder, and then listened to and quieted the fears of frantic
women and men.
Is the splendid lesson of these years clear? By Providential
dispensation these colonies were a miniature of the America of 1775,
suddenly thrown upon its own resources and in war. The divine hand is
not more clearly seen in our national development than in the struggle
of the colonies between 1745 and 1763, which prepared a nation for the
hour her independence should strike. And now it was that Washington,
Gates, Mercer, Gladwin, Lewis, Putnam, Crawford, Gibson, Stephen, St.
Clair, and Stewart learned for themselves and then taught their
countrymen to fight; now Washington found what it meant to be the
commander of bare-foot armies, already a hero of two defeats, he was yet
to play the hero in bitter, pitiful extremities, to become a dogged
believer in hopeless, last alternatives, a burden-bearer for hundreds of
homeless ones--a people's mainstay when other men were faltering. Now,
as in 1775, his task was to rouse a people only half awake to the
crisis; to demonstrate the superiority of wisely ordered liberty over
license, and the inferiority of personal independence compared with a
unity made strong through faithful cooeperation, and hallowed by mutual
self-sacrifice. And fortunate it was for all the colonies that England
compelled them to learn how to carry war's heavy harness now, against
the day when they should be assailed by something more disastrously
fatal to the cause of liberty than savages fired to murder and pillage
by French brandy.
In all these wild days, the old path westward from Shippensburg and
Carlisle was often crowded with fugitives fleeing from the reeking
frontier, and, quite as often, shrouded in a cloud of dust raised by
squads of wan militia hastening westward to the defense of the
outposts. Though no officer guarding this strategic passage-way became
endeared to his countrymen as Washington, here heroism and devotion were
displayed, if ever on this continent. The plans of England during these
years will be described elsewhere, but it is to our purpose to know now
that for the present she deserted the southern provinces; that she was
"willing to wait for the rains to wet the powder, and rats to eat the
bow-strings of the enemy, rather than attempt to drive them from her
[southern] frontiers." Until 1756 the matter of the defense of the
Pennsylvania frontier was left almost entirely to individual initiative.
But already the road through Carlisle and Shippensburg had been
fortified. Fort Lowther was erected in Carlisle as early as 1753. It was
an important post on the route to Virginia, over which the wagons and
horses raised by Franklin for Braddock, were, in part, forwarded to Fort
Cumberland. Here Governor Morris came, to be in closer touch with
Braddock, and here the news of the defeat reached him.
Fort Franklin was erected on the old road at Shippensburg, twenty miles
west of Carlisle and thirty-six from Harris Ferry (Harrisburg). It was
built sometime previous to Braddock's time but was not used after 1756.
Ten miles further on at Falling Springs (Chambersburg) there was no
fortification in 1755, nor was there one at Loudoun (Loudon) thirteen
miles west of that point. Two miles south of Fort Loudoun Morris erected
a deposit at McDowell's Mill (Bridgeport, Franklin County) but, though
the spot was well known on the frontier, there seems to have been no
regular fort there until 1756.[45] It was at this point that the new
road toward Raystown diverged westward from the main road running south
to Virginia. This junction was considered a strategic point by the time
of Braddock's defeat, as shown by Shirley's order to Dunbar quoted at
the close of the last chapter.
Up to the time of Braddock's defeat the Pennsylvania Assembly had done
nothing toward the preservation of the colony, save ordering the road
cut from Carlisle to the Youghiogheny river. They furnished not a man
for Braddock's army and voted not a pound toward the expense of securing
the wagons and horses which made Braddock's march possible. The stores
which Governor Morris laid in along the line of the road, at
Shippensburg and McDowell's Mill, were secured and forwarded without aid
from the Assembly. Though many Pennsylvanians served, in one way or
another, in the unfortunate expedition, the public was divided on this
issue. Some were loyal to the Assembly and many favored warlike
measures. It has been asserted that had not Forbes's Road been built in
1758 its building would have been postponed twenty years.
Passing this interesting speculation, it is sure Braddock's defeat
brought to Pennsylvania a terrible and bloody awakening; nothing can
show this more strikingly than the fact that when Braddock's successor
came, only three years later, the Pennsylvania Assembly quickly
supported him by voting twenty-seven hundred men for offensive service
and appropriating half a million dollars for war.
The change was not more striking than was the need for it. All the
terrifying scenes in Virginia were reproduced in Pennsylvania; the
savages poured through the mountain gaps and fell with unparalleled fury
upon a hundred defenseless settlements. Pennsylvania had not expanded
further at this time than to the Blue Mountains. Her frontier was not,
therefore, nearly as broad as Virginia's, and the frontier firing-line
was not so far removed from the populated districts. At the same time it
is probable that the Indians from Logstown and Kittanning could get a
scalp quicker (so far as distance was concerned) from Pennsylvania than
from Virginia--and the French paid as much for one as for the other!
Late in 1756 the Pennsylvania Assembly, now awakened to the condition of
affairs caused by their shortsighted, prejudiced policy, took the matter
of protection of the frontier into their own hands. Failing to furnish
the ounce of prevention, they came quickly with the pound of cure. A
chain of forts was planned which, stretching along the barrier wall of
the Blue Mountains from the Potomac to the Delaware, should guard the
more prominent gaps. "Sometimes the chain of defenses ran on the south
side, and frequently both sides of the mountains were occupied, as the
needs of the population demanded. Some of these forts consisted of the
defenses previously erected by the settlers, which were available for
the purpose, and of which the government took possession, while others
were newly erected. Almost without exception they were composed of a
stockade of heavy planks, inclosing a space of ground more or less
extensive, on which were built from one to four blockhouses, pierced
with loopholes for musketry, and occupied as quarters by the soldiers
and refugee settlers. In addition to these regular forts it became
necessary at various points where depredations were most frequent, to
have subsidiary places of defense and refuge, which were also garrisoned
by soldiers and which generally comprised farmhouses, selected because
of their superior strength and convenient location, around which the
usual stockade was thrown, or occasionally blockhouses erected for the
purpose. The soldiers who garrisoned these forts were provincial troops,
which almost without exception were details from the First Battalion of
the Pennsylvania Regiment, under the command of that brave and energetic
officer, Lt. Colonel Conrad Weiser."[46] The appended map is a
photograph of the original which was made in this year, 1756--for the
forts of 1757 are not included. It is of particular interest because it
gives the complete cordon of forts along the frontier from the Hudson to
the last fort in Virginia which Washington was building. Among other
things this map shows clearly how much wider were the frontiers of the
southern than those of the northern colonies. The most westerly fort in
Virginia was fifty miles further west than Fort Duquesne. The
Appalachian range trends southwesterly and its influence upon the
expansion of the colonies is most significant.
[Illustration: FRONTIER FORTS AND BLOCKHOUSES IN 1756
(_From the original in British Public Records Office_)]
In this year, though a western campaign on Fort Duquesne did not
materialize, the line of the old road was greatly strengthened and a
blow was struck at the Indians on the Allegheny that was timely and
effective. The former was a most important task--of far greater
importance than was dreamed at that date. No one then knew the part this
road westward from Carlisle was to play in our national development; it
could not have been conceived, in 1756, that this route was to be the
only fortified highway into the West--the most important military road
of equal length on the continent throughout the eighteenth century.
That Fort Lowther at Carlisle was in ruins in 1756 is shown by the
following letter written by William Trent to Richard Peters February 15,
1756, which also gives a realistic picture of the state of affairs which
compelled the Pennsylvania Assembly to begin the fort-building of that
year: "All the people had left their houses, betwixt this and the
mountain, some come to town and others gathering into the little
forts.[47] They are moving their effects from Shippensburg; every one
thinks of flying unless the Government fall upon some effectual method,
and that immediately, of securing the frontiers, there will not be one
inhabitant in this Valley one month longer. There is a few of us
endeavoring to keep up the spirits of the people. We have proposed going
upon the enemy tomorrow, but whether a number sufficient can be got, I
cannot tell; no one scarce seems to be affected with the distress of
their neighbours and for that reason none will stir but those that are
next the enemy and in immediate danger. A fort in this town would have
saved this part of the country, but I doubt this town in a few days,
will be deserted, if this party [of savages] that is out should kill any
people nigh here." Commissioner Young was at Carlisle soon after,
putting Fort Lowther into proper condition; he wrote Governor Morris: "I
have endeavored to put this large fort in the best possible defense I
can; but I am sorry to say the people of this town cannot be prevailed
on, to do anything for their own safety.... They seem to be lulled into
fatal security, a strange infatuation, which seems to prevail throughout
this province." The fort was not completed in July; Colonel Armstrong
wrote Morris on the twenty-third of that month. "The duties of the
harvest field have not permitted me to finish Carlisle Fort with the
soldiers, it should be done otherwise, the soldiers cannot be so well
governed, and may be absent or without the gates at the time of the
greatest necessity." In the same letter Colonel Armstrong--the
Washington of Pennsylvania--wrote: "Lyttleton, Shippensburg and Carlisle
(the two last not finished) are the only forts now built that will in my
opinion be serviceable to the public." It is significant that these
three forts were on the old road westward, showing that this route was
of utmost importance in Armstrong's eyes.
Fort Lyttleton was one of four important forts erected, at Armstrong's
direction, by Governor Morris west of the Susquehanna late in 1755 and
early in 1756. It was built "at Sugar Cabins upon the new road"; wrote
Morris to Shirley February 9: "It [Fort Lyttleton] stands upon the new
road opened by this Province towards the Ohio, and about twenty miles
from the settlements, and I have called it Fort Lyttleton, in honor of
my friend George. This fort will not only protect the inhabitants in
that part of the Province, but being upon a road that within a few miles
joins General Braddock's road, it will prevent the march of any regulars
into the Province and at the same time serve as an advance post
or magazine in case of an attempt to the westward." The site of
this fort was on land now owned by Dr. Trout, of McConnellsburg,
Pennsylvania--about sixty feet on the north side of the old state
road.[48]
Fort Morris at Shippensburg was building in November 1755; "we have one
hundred men working," wrote James Burd, "... with heart and hand every
day. The town is full of people, five or six families in a house, in
great want of arms and ammunition; but, with what we have we are
determined to give the enemy as warm a reception, as we can. Some of our
people have been taken prisoners, but have made their escape, and came
to us this morning." There had, as noted, been some sort of
fortification here at an earlier date, Fort Franklin. As said
previously, Fort Morris was still uncompleted July 23, 1756. It was in
Fort Franklin, undoubtedly, that the magazine was placed during
Braddock's campaign. Fort McDowell, at McDowell's Mill, was also erected
in 1756, being an important point at the junction of the old road into
Virginia and the new road to Raystown. The savage onslaughts of the
Indians were felt no more severely in any quarter than near here. At
Great Cove, in November 1755, forty-seven persons were murdered or taken
captive out of a total population of ninety-three. The strategic
position of Fort McDowell at the junction of the roads was emphasized by
Colonel Armstrong, who, after saying that Forts Lyttleton, Shippensburg,
and Carlisle were the only ones that would be useful to the public,
added: "McDowell's, or thereabouts, is a necessary post; but the present
fort is not defensible."
Fort Loudoun was erected on the old road in 1756, one mile east of the
present village of Loudon, Franklin County. The spot was historic even
before it was fortified, the settlement here being one of the oldest in
that section of the state. This point was a famous rendezvous both in
the early days when the Old Trading Path was the main western highway,
and in after days when the path became Forbes's Road. From here the
pack-horse trains started westward into the mountains loaded--two
hundred pounds to a horse--with goods which had come this far in wagons
from Lancaster and Philadelphia. The site of Fort Loudoun therefore
marks the western extremity of the early colonial roadways and the
eastern extremity of the "packers' paths" or trading paths which
offered, until 1758, the only route across the mountains.[49] Fort
Loudoun was built late in 1755, after considerable debate as to its
location. Colonel Armstrong, after examining a spot near one Barr's,
finally determined to locate it "on a place in that neighborhood, near
to Parnell's Knob, where one Patton lives ... as it is near the new
road; it will make the distance from Shippensburg to Fort Lyttleton two
miles further than by McDowell's."
Ten miles southwest of Shippensburg, Benjamin Chambers, a noted
pioneer, erected Fort Chambers at Falling Spring, the present
Chambersburg. It was a private fort completed in 1756; by some means the
owner had secured two four-pound cannon which he mounted in his little
fort, the roof of which he had already covered with lead. It was feared
that Chambers's little fort would be captured by the savages and the
guns turned upon Shippensburg and Carlisle. But their owner repudiated
the insinuation and even held the guns from Colonel Armstrong, who was
armed with the governor's order to surrender them. Incidentally, also,
he made good his boasts and held the fort with equal pugnacity from the
savages. Colonel Chambers was of great assistance to General Forbes in
the days of 1758, and, as an aged man, sent his three sons, raised in
the lead-roofed fortress with its "Great Guns," to Boston in 1775 to
fight again for the land he had helped to conquer from the Indians in
the dark days of Braddock and Forbes. Such men as Benjamin Chambers made
Forbes's Road a possibility. The state road built westward over the
track of Forbes's and Bouquet's armies is well known in eastern
Pennsylvania as the "Chambersburg and Pittsburg turnpike."[50]
These forts west of the Susquehanna were garrisoned by the eight
companies of the second battalion of the Pennsylvania regiment. While
the work of completing the forts not yet finished went on, a campaign of
more importance than was realized was conceived by ex-Governor Morris
and explained to Governor Denny and the Council. It comprised a bold
stroke by Lieutenant-colonel Armstrong at the Indian-infested region of
Kittanning on the Allegheny. Here the Delaware Captain Jacobs held
bloody sway, having, according to the report of an Indian spy who had
recently visited the spot, nearly one hundred white prisoners from
Virginia and Pennsylvania captive at that point.
Fort Shirley was appointed the place of rendezvous and the little
campaign was kept as secret as possible. As the map shows, Fort Shirley
(no. 23), Fort Lyttleton (no. 24) and Shippensburg form a triangle, the
longest side of which marks the straight line between the two latter
posts. Fort Loudoun was near this line between Fort Lyttleton and Fort
Morris at Shippensburg. Near Fort Loudoun a branch of the old Kittanning
Path ran northwesterly by Fort Shirley and onward to the Allegheny.[51]
Over this track the bold band, which rendezvoused at Fort Shirley late
in August, was to enter the Indian land. It numbered three hundred and
seven men, almost precisely the size of Washington's party which
precipitated war in 1754. But with the gloomy fate of Washington's band
and Braddock's army in mind this must have been a thoughtful company of
men that proceeded from Fort Shirley on the next to the last day of
August 1756. Their success was all out of proportion to their
expectation but not out of proportion to their bravery. Within a week
Kittanning was reached, surrounded when it was darkest before dawn, and
savagely attacked in the grey of the misty morning. The town was utterly
destroyed, some three score savages killed and eleven prisoners rescued
and brought back over the mountains. The moral effect of this dash
toward the Allegheny was of exceeding benefit to the whole frontier, and
Armstrong--always feared by the Indians--became their especial _bete
noire_. The expedition, having been made from lethargic Pennsylvania,
had a wholesome effect upon all the other colonies and did much to
cement them into the common league which accomplished much before two
years had passed. Armstrong, as one of the builders of the new road
through Raystown, as efficient officer in the work of fortifying this
route, and now as leader of an offensive stroke at once daring and
successful, was slowly being fitted for more useful and more important
duties when the flower of Pennsylvania's frontier should be thrown
across the Alleghenies upon Fort Duquesne.
This officer's opinion, already quoted, that the only forts worth the
candle west of the Susquehanna were the three or four which fortified
the main route westward from Carlisle to Raystown, appears to have met
the approval of those in authority by 1757; on April 10, Governor Denny
wrote to the Proprietaries: "Four Forts only were to remain over
Susquehannah, viz., Lyttleton, Loudoun, Shippensburg, and Carlisle."[52]
If this is considered a backward step it must also be considered as a
concentration of energy in a most telling manner. If the frontier from
the Susquehanna to the Maryland line could not be held at every point
the decision seems to have been that the line of the old road must be
secured at all costs, whereupon all the public forts were abandoned save
the four which guarded this western highway. But the decision meant more
than this. It was in fact an offensive measure. Instead of holding a
line of forts at the mountain gaps as a shield to the settlements, the
line of the roadway westward was to be protected and even prolonged--a
bristling sword-point stretching over the Alleghenies into the very
heart of the French and Indian region. This is proved by the building of
a new fort yet further west than Lyttleton--at Raystown, near the point
where Burd's road, cut in 1755 toward the Youghiogheny, left the Old
Trading Path. This significant undertaking was evidently on the tapis
early in the winter. On February 22, Armstrong wrote Burd: "This is all
that can possibly be done, before the grass grows and proper numbers
unite, except it is agreed to fortify Raystown, of which I, yet, know
nothing." On the fifth of May he addressed a letter to the governor in
which he said: "... prompts me to propose to your Honour what I have
long ago suggested, to the late Governor and gentlemen commissioners,
that is the building a fort at Raystown without which the King's
business and the country's safety can never be effected to the
westward.... 'Tis true this service will require upwards of five hundred
men, as no doubt they will be attacked if any power be at Fort Duquesne,
because this will be a visible, large and direct stride to that place."
Thus it is clear that every step westward on the new-cut roadway from
Fort Lyttleton toward Raystown was a step toward Fort Duquesne, and
every fortification built on this track was a "visible, large and
direct" stroke at the power of France on the Ohio. A fort was erected at
Raystown within the year.