If I had the pen of a good writer I should incline to describe what
I saw. There were great fires burning, and all manner of baggage
and stores thrown on them. The regulars were chopping up the
artillery-waggons and casting ammunition into a creek.
About a hundred yards away from my hut, in the middle of the road, a
deep grave was dug. A few officers and men were gathered about it,
and on the ground lay the general’s body, wrapt in a cloak, but no
coffin. I looked about me, not knowing how to conduct the matter. Then
an orderly handed me the chaplain’s prayer-book, with a marker at the
funeral service.
As I was about to begin, Lieutenant-Colonel Burton came forward with
a flag and laid it decently over the dead man. Then he placed on it
his sword, and fell back, and all uncovered. After this I read slowly,
for the light was yet dim, the service of the church. This being
over, the men lowered the body into the grave and filled it up with
earth, and cast stones and bushes over it. No guard was ordered, and no
volley fired, lest, as was said, it might be heard by the enemy, which
appeared to me foolish, for there was noise enough, and at any minute
one hundred men in the woods would have routed the whole camp.
Thus died a man whose good and bad qualities were intimately blended.
He was brave even to a fault and in regular service would have done
honour to the army. His attachments were warm, his enmities were
strong, and, having no disguise about him, both appeared in full force.
He was generous and disinterested, but plain and blunt in his manner,
even to rudeness.
Dunbar made haste to get away, and I was not less pleased to be out of
an ill-contrived business.
This affair was a serious blow to the belief in the colonies as to the
high value of the King’s soldiers. It became like a proverb in Virginia
to say a man “ran like a regular.”
Mr. Franklin said to me long afterwards that this disaster gave us
the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the powers of British
regular troops had not been well founded, and indeed I am assured that
when Lord Percy’s and Colonel Pitcairn’s force was put to flight at
Lexington the older farmers on our own frontiers, when they knew what
had been done, were less amazed than the minute-men of Massachusetts.
We reached Wills Creek on the 18th, as Morris said, the worst-beaten
army that had not been in battle. Colonel Dunbar did not require my
aid, and my general being dead, my service as a volunteer was at an end.
The march to the settlements was most disgraceful――all in cowardly
haste to get out of the wilderness. I am satisfied that no troops
are so given to pillage as a retreating army, and certainly none was
ever worse conducted by the officers or more disorderly than Colonel
Dunbar’s force. The settlers and outlying farms near Fort Cumberland
suffered much; men and women were misused, and chickens and cattle
stolen. I heard afterwards that in their march through Pennsylvania
Dunbar’s men plundered and insulted the farmers still worse, and were
quite enough, Mr. Franklin said, to put us out of all patience with
such defenders.
I bade good-by to the aides of the general, and would have had Orme and
Morris go home with me to be cared for by Dr. Craik, but they preferred
to go on to Philadelphia. They were much dispirited, but had only warm
praise for my Virginia rangers. I was in no better humour, and felt, as
I rode away, that we were on the edge of an awful crisis for the border
counties. The favourable sentiments Sir John St. Clair and Colonel
Burton were pleased to express respecting me could not but be pleasing;
but the situation of our affairs was, to my mind, so serious as to put
me into one of my melancholic moods and to make me feel, as I often
did in the greater war, that, what with want of patriotism and lack of
spirit, only that Providence in which I have always trusted could carry
us through a great peril. As usual, a brisk ride jolted me into a more
hopeful state of mind.
I lay for a day at Winchester in a poor tavern, cared for by the
general’s man, Bishop. There, to my comfort, came Lord Fairfax, who had
the kindness to bring with him a good horse, which I was the better
pleased to have because what became of the horse the general would have
had me have I was never able to hear. His lordship insisted that I
rest at Greenway Court until I was more fit to travel. I had here many
letters; one said that I was given up for killed, and there was come a
long story about my dying speech. My mother was in a sad worry about
me, and when she received my letter contradicting my death, and that I
had never composed any dying speech, she declared I was always making
her anxious and had no right to distress her by doing things that gave
her occasion to think I was dead. His lordship overcame my objections,
and I remained with him at the court several days, well pleased to be
at rest.
When alone with Lord Fairfax, he showed me the affection and concern
which, like myself, he was averse to displaying in company. After I
had been made to give him a full account of the march and the battle,
he said: “You will be wise to write and to say little of what took
place, and to let others say what they will. The men who, having done
something worthy of praise, do not incline to speak of it, are sure to
be enough spoken of by others.”
This was much as in any case I inclined to do, so that until now I have
nowhere related this matter at length, and, as to the diary kept on our
march, the French had it, and I saved only two or three letters.
What his lordship wrote of this disastrous business and of me to his
friends in London, I do not know, but I was soon aware that both in
England and in the colonies I was more praised than I deserved to be.
In 1758, a second British force, under Colonel Grant, was defeated in
like manner as Braddock had been, but this was at the outworks of Fort
Duquesne. In November of that same year I served under General Forbes
and saw once more this disastrous neighbourhood. The hillside where we
suffered such disgraceful and needless defeat was a miserable sight,
for there were here scattered bits of red uniform and the bones of men
and horses bleached in the sun.
At this time the garrison had fled, after succeeding in part to burn
the fort, but no great damage done. I myself raised the flag of his
Majesty over the ruins which had cost the lives of so many brave men.
I lingered longer at Greenway Court than was needful to repair my
broken health, for what his lordship had to say of men and of passing
events I found instructive, and the counsels he gave to agree with my
own disposition.
I received here a letter from my mother, entreating me not to engage
further in the military line, but giving no good reasons, so that I had
to reply that she should more consider my honour and what duty I owed
to my country than to grieve over what might not result in misfortune,
or if it did, was to be accepted as better for me than to have failed
to be worthy of the esteem of just men. When I spoke of this letter to
Lord Fairfax, he said I had answered with entire propriety.
I reached Mount Vernon, as my diary shows, on July 26, at 4 P.M., a
poorer man for my campaigning, and, I feared, with a good constitution
much impaired.
Soon after I returned I received several letters congratulating me on
my escape unhurt, and expressing a general satisfaction that amidst so
much cowardice and ill management the rangers behaved with spirit and
courage.
Among these communications one which afforded me more than ordinary
pleasure was from Mr. Benjamin Franklin. Besides what he found fit to
say of me, were certain reflections which, at this distant day, seem to
nourish my inclination to look forward now, as he did then, desirous,
as all must be, to discern from the present what the future alone can
surely disclose.
Indeed, as I have descended the vale of life I have had increasing
need to consider what the years would bring about, for to endeavour to
forecast the future is one of the duties of a statesman.
Mr. Franklin, when in his last illness, said to General Knox, who spoke
of it to Mrs. Washington, that I possessed the capacity to look forward
in a way which, he said, was one of the forms of imagination, but that
I had not the gift of fancy. I am not assured even now that I fully
understand what he desired to convey by this statement.
The letter which gave rise in my mind to these reflections contains
one of those light statements which I have never found myself able to
employ, and which do not assist me to understand the affair in hand,
or to comprehend any better what is desired to be conveyed.
_Philadelphia._
To Colonel George Washington.
RESPECTED SIR: I am the richer for having had the opportunity
of making your acquaintance, and I ought not to conceal from
you the pleasure I have had in learning of late that your
conduct in the humiliating defeat of General Braddock was such
as to be a matter of just pride to the colonies.
Affairs with us, and indeed with all the colonies, are in a
condition greatly to be deplored. We are, as it appears to me,
much in the same state as a man I knew who, having married four
times, had as a consequence four mothers-in-law, all of whom
were of opinion that they had the right to meddle in his family
affairs. These are, for us, the King, the Parliament, the Lords
of Trade, and the Governors. For all of them we are a family of
bad little boys. We, on the other hand, entertain the belief
that we are grown-up Englishmen, who believe that we inherit
certain rights. Soon or late mischief will come of it. The eggs
of trouble are slow to hatch, but they do surely hatch soon or
late and are never addled.
It would be worse than folly to conceal from you my fears
as to the future. There are limitations to what men like our
colonists, accustomed to a large measure of individual freedom,
will endure. We seem to me to have gone back a century and to
be at the commencement of just such a struggle with the crown
as then occurred.
I was interested in what you said of the great coldness of a
spring at Mount Vernon. I will, when opportunity serves, send
you a good thermometer, when I think you will find that your
wells have near about what is the average heat of the air for
the entire year.
I hope to hear from you at your convenience, and, believe me, I
shall feel myself honoured by any such mark of your attention,
and that I am, with respect,
Your ob’d’t humble servant,
_Benjamin Franklin_.
P. S. I venture to enclose one of my almanacs.
_B. F._
I gave this almanac and the letter to be read to my Lord Fairfax. He
returned them, saying that what was said of the way of governing the
colonies was true, but that Mr. Franklin overstated what was to be
feared in the future; and as to the almanac, damn the man’s little
maxims! They smelt of New England.