When alone with us the Postmaster-General talked with even greater
seriousness, saying that in Philadelphia, so secure were they of the
success of the campaign, that a gentleman, a Dr. Bond I think it was,
proposed to raise money for an illumination to be ready when the news
of victory came. Mr. Franklin told us that he had begged him to take
warning from a verse in the Old Testament as to before battle and
after, and this much pleased his lordship, who laughed and said, “Well
put, sir”; but when I asked what the verse was, they both laughed and
bade me read my Bible, and, indeed, I am none the wiser up to this day.
It was not alone the general who was discontented. On arriving at
Wills Creek I found this letter from George Croghan, one of the
most important traders on the frontier, and with a commission from
Pennsylvania to make roads and secure waggons and Indian allies.
DEAR COLONEL: If the rest are like Sir John St. Clair, I shall
be glad to be shut of the business. He swore at us for delay
and said “no soldier should handle an axe, but by fire and
sword he would force the inhabitants to do the work; we should
be treated as traitors, and that when the General came he would
give us ten bad words for one that he had given.” You, Sir,
know well how hard it is to stir up our border folks and what
a task to get from farmers in the spring their waggons and
horses. We are doing our best. I have secured Captain Jack――a
guide hard to beat.
There was more of it, and enough to afford serious thought.
During our stay I heard nothing but complaints of our want of
efficiency, and no one seemed to see that it was silly to expect to
find everything at hand in a land as new as ours. Captain Orme and
Ensign Allen complained on one occasion to Dr. Mercer and me that our
men were languid, spiritless, and unsoldier-like. Dr. Mercer, who was
a hot-headed Scotchman, said he had seen undisciplined Highlanders put
to rout regulars at Prestonpans and Falkirk, and that in the woods
our men would beat the best grenadiers in the King’s army. Orme grew
angry and said Mercer was a damned rebel; but I succeeded in quieting
them, although I insisted that Captain Orme would in time change his
opinion, as indeed happened. Mercer was in a constant rage and told
me over and over that the officers were insolent and that the general
was ill with the disease called damned foolishness. I thought him
imprudent and begged him to be careful; but as he had served in ’45
with the Pretender, and come over here after his flight, he was, on
that account, in bad odour with the regular officers, and, I feared,
also with the general, who had been with the Duke of Cumberland upon
the final bloody defeat of the rebels at Culloden. Dr. Mercer had just
cause to complain, but I thought him unwise to talk so freely. He
was, nevertheless, a gallant gentleman, and died a general, falling
gloriously at Princeton when rallying his men.
I saw Mr. Franklin again but once before he went away. He was clearly
not a man altogether to the liking of Lord Fairfax, but why, I never
came to know. He seemed to me at that time a conscientious and
intelligent person, very able to get along with all manner of people.
I must admit that he conducted matters of gravity as if they amused
him and were not serious, a method which never altogether pleased me.
When I justified the general’s groaning over his many difficulties as
to roads and transport and food, he said that his difficulties were of
British making, and that had the force landed in Philadelphia, horses,
waggons, and supplies would have been found in abundance. To this I
agreed, for I thought the plan of the march ill chosen. After this the
doctor amused himself with the astonishment the Indians would have when
they got hold of the wigs of the officers――a jest which did not seem
to me agreeable. He spoke also with much freedom of the general, and
said to argue with him was useless and was like striking a pillow or
reasoning with a wild animal, who had only its own thoughts and could
not comprehend yours. I made no reply, and he fell to most ingenious
talk about the temperature of springs and the ways of swimming.
Notwithstanding his doubts, the great array of war kept me somewhat
confident and cheerful until I heard that nine hundred men of the
French had passed Sandusky on their way to reinforce the French on the
Ohio, so that I had to write Mr. Speaker Robinson that I feared we
should have more to do than merely to march up and down the hills, as
the general had said would be all.
It was May 19 when the general arrived at Fort Cumberland, and June 10
before he set out to cross the mountains, and after, as the general
said, more expenditure of oaths in a month than he had needed in his
whole Scotch campaign with the duke, of whom the general liked to speak.
I spent much of my time while we lay at this post in learning the
methods of drill and discipline, and in aiding to satisfy the Virginia
recruits that it was necessary to imitate the methods of the regulars,
although if it came to wood fighting I believed the English officers
and men would more need to learn the ways of the rangers. Yet some who
judged our people by their dislike of strict drill were of opinion that
the lowness and ignorance of their officers gave little hope of their
future behaviour under fire. My task of helping to train the men was
given up when the general ordered me to go to Williamsburg and fetch
back four thousand pounds, an errand not much to my liking.
Unfortunately, the detail was made without my having the opportunity of
choice, and proved very unfit, giving me much concern and anxiety. I do
not know why there was delay in assembling this detail, but eight days
passed after I got my order before I was given the men. I believe they
would not have been eight seconds in dispersing if we had been attacked.
Captain Horatio Gates, of a New York Independent company, advised not
to take regulars, who would obey only their own officers; but I had no
choice, and so set out and was gone a fortnight. On my return I slept
every night in the waggon, with my precious money about me and pistols
loaded. The men were drunken and disobedient until I promised strappado
on our reaching camp, and indeed I was glad to be rid of the money and
the guard.
I saw during this ride and later that, as Orme had told me, the men of
the Forty-fourth and Forty-eighth regiments were drunken, mutinous, and
disorderly, so that it was not alone our own failures to provide which
made difficult the task of our unfortunate commander.
I found the general much disgusted at the delays in supplying him, and,
as I thought, most unwise, and only increased his trouble by abuse of
the colonies, for the more men deserve abuse the less they like it, and
get sullen and less than ever inclined to help.
Just before we set out from Fort Cumberland, the general being now in
the saddle, Lord Fairfax presented me with a handsome pair of pistols,
and said: “I should have been pleased to have had a son like you;
but for that I must have had a wife, which is a calamity I have been
spared. If occasion serves, I shall be glad to hear from you.”
Lord Fairfax had informed me that General Braddock would ask my opinion
and advice as to the use to be made of Indians and our rangers. He did
consult me, but only, I believed, because his lordship had desired him
to do so.
I never succeeded to make much impression upon him, and it was as the
wise Mr. Franklin had said. Many Indians joined us on the way with
their squaws, but the chiefs were too little considered or consulted.
Their women were insulted or worse, and those that came to-day,
receiving no gifts, were gone to-morrow.
On June 6, Sir John St. Clair was sent on in advance with some six
hundred choppers to widen and better my old road. After him came Sir
Peter Halket’s force. On June 10, if I remember aright, the general
followed with his staff and the rest of the army. As soon as the march
began, the lack of discipline became plain, and the officers were worse
than the men and altogether too much drunkenness.
Captain Croghan said to me: “I should like to give these fellows a
wood drill and upset half the rum-kegs.” This was as we led our horses
over the second mountain. “Why, sir,” he said, “here are hundreds of
waggons and enough gimcracks and nonsense to fit out a town, and all
the officers of foot on horseback.”
I said that I had represented to the general and Colonel Dunbar
the risk of this long train, and urged that we use our horses for
packhorses and to carry only what we really needed. “That would be,”
Captain Croghan said, “for the men, blankets, an axe, a rifle, a
knife, and ammunition.”
He went on to tell us that he had urged this to be done again and
again――that was, to Captains Orme and Shirley, the military secretary
of the commander, for he had been told plainly enough that he was
himself too small a person to converse with the general, and a d――d
trader he had been called. He was sure the general would listen to no
advice except from the King’s officers. I had to admit that he listened
to me at times, and had always said in a civil way that he would
consider of what I advised, but got no further.