THE FATE OF THE OHIO VALLEY
I. FRONTIER FEARS AND PANICS
There was an abundance of responsibility at once for Washington in his
new official position. All the frontiers were being attacked by
Indians urged on by the French. Washington tried to get his troops
together to meet the Indians at the outposts, but he was unable at the
main post to muster more than twenty-five of the militia. The others
declared that if they had to die they preferred to die with their
women and children.
In his first report to the Governor, he wrote, “No orders are obeyed,
but such as a party of soldiers or my own drawn sword enforces.
Without this, not a single horse, for the most earnest occasion, can
be had,--to such a pitch has the insolence of these people arrived, by
having every point hitherto submitted to them. However, I have given
up none, where His Majesty’s service requires the contrary, and where
my proceedings are justified by my instructions; nor will I, unless
they execute what they threaten,--that is, to blow out our brains.”
This was naturally at the period of Washington’s greatest loyalty to
his Sovereign, and also shows that some of Braddock’s notions of
military authority still lingered with him. Perhaps it is better to
say that he recognized the military necessity for obedient discipline
in a common purpose and result, or there could be no successful army.
We may easily guess that the insolence to which he refers was the
frontiersman’s disrespect for military authority and his growing
belief in his own right to choose the manner of his service or his
death. These men had been as badly treated by the Braddock style of
authority as Washington had been, and most of his troubles doubtless
arose from their memory of insolence in the officers.
As an example of the panic and confusion of the times, while
Washington was at Winchester endeavoring to get his troops organized,
a man came running into town, one Sunday afternoon, saying in
breathless terror that a horde of Indians was only twelve miles off,
killing and burning everything they came to. Washington remained up
all night preparing for the attack. At about dawn on Monday morning,
another man arrived, declaring that a host of Indians was now within
four miles of the town. He had himself heard the guns of the Indians
and the shrieks of the victims. The scouts sent out by Washington had
not yet returned, and the terror-stricken people at once guessed that
they had been ambushed and killed.
All that Washington could get together equipped to meet the Indian
drive was only forty men. At the head of these he rode forth to the
scene of massacre and carnage. All that they ever found was three
drunken troopers who had been yelling in their carousal on the way to
town and firing off their pistols.
Washington arrested them and brought them in as trophies of the Indian
war.
“These circumstances,” Washington wrote in his report, “show what a
panic prevails among the people; how much they are all alarmed at the
most usual customary crimes; and yet how impossible it is to get them
to act in any respect for their common safety.”
A Captain arriving at that time with recruits from Alexandria,
reported that, in coming across the Blue Ridge, he had met a crowd of
people hastening away in terror, whom he could not stop. They all told
him that the Indians had overwhelmed the country and that Winchester
had been sacked and burned.
Washington saw that nothing but confusion and cross purposes could
prevail under the conditions as they then existed. Accordingly, he set
about to reform the methods and the laws. Under his management, order
at last came out of chaos. He also learned the uses of military show
to give confidence and he ordered rather gorgeous uniforms to be sent
him from England. This was probably necessary in order also to retain
the respect of the young English officers for whom it was often true
that the clothes made the man.
II. POLITICAL INTRIGUE AND OFFICIAL CONFUSION
Early in 1756, in order to get the necessary co-operation among the
colonies, to settle the bitter quarrels as to rank among officers, and
to give the Virginia colony a better idea of the plan for the war,
Washington decided to visit General Shirley, at Boston. General
Shirley had succeeded General Braddock as commander-in-chief of all
the colonies.
Washington, with his aides in brilliant uniform, taken care of by a
retinue of colored servants in finest livery, all riding in a pompous
cavalcade, representing the style of aristocratic Southern gentlemen,
made a profound social sensation all along the line of their travel,
especially in Philadelphia, New York and Boston. After ten days’
conference in Boston, his mission being successful, he returned to
Virginia as he had come.
On Washington’s return to his headquarters at Winchester, he found the
people in more desperate terror than ever, and this time with good
reason. The French and Indians were indeed ravaging the country within
twenty miles. Any hour the enemy might sweep down upon the wretched
town and destroy the people. If Washington could not save them they
were indeed lost. It is said that the women surrounded him with
terror-stricken cries, holding up their children, and imploring him to
save them from the savages.
The feelings of the young commander may be appreciated from the letter
he wrote to Governor Dinwiddie.
“I am too little acquainted with pathetic language,” he said, “to
attempt a description of these people’s distresses. But what can I do?
I see their situation; I know their danger, and participate in their
sufferings, without having it in my power to give them further relief
than uncertain promises. The supplicating tears of the women, and the
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.”
But the Virginia newspapers very freely cast the blame for the
Indian’s success on the military management. Washington was deeply
stung with these attacks and he declared that he would resign at once,
if it were not for the immediate dangers pressing so hard upon them.
Then his friends began writing him encouraging letters and he was
strengthened to see the issues through to some end.
“The country knows her danger,” said one of the Virginia legislators,
“but such is her parsimony that she is willing to wait for the rains
to wet the powder, and the rats to eat the bowstrings of the enemy,
rather than attempt to drive her foes from her frontiers.”
But gradually through more blundering and still more confusion of
purpose, after the French had begun to lose heavily in the North, a
course of concerted action was once more organized against Fort
Duquesne, as the center of supplies for the French and Indians in
their frontier warfare. Scouts continually brought in reports that
Fort Duquesne had become greatly weakened and it was believed by all
that this place should now be taken to make good the success on the
northern frontier.
At length such an expedition was on the way, and Washington wrote to
the Commander, General Forbes, to be allowed to join the expedition
with his command. This request was accepted, and, on July 2, 1758,
Washington arrived at Fort Cumberland.
III. “A MATTER OF GREAT ADMIRATION”
War was at hand, but getting into action to accomplish results was
distractingly slow. No word arrived as to what they were to do. They
remained at Fort Cumberland to the disgust of Washington, and to the
increased dispiriting, sickly condition of his men, until September.
Then they went forward under Colonel Boquet to a point called Loyal
Hannon, fifty miles from Fort Duquesne. Here they stopped, and,
against Washington’s earnest remonstrance, Colonel Boquet detached
eight hundred men from his force of two thousand, and sent them
forward to reconnoiter about Fort Duquesne, under command of Major
Grant. They were not to engage the enemy but were to return and
report.
However, Major Grant believed they were easily able to whip anything
that might be in or about Fort Duquesne. He could not open an attack
on them according to orders, but if he could induce them to attack
him, it would give him a chance for a fight. Accordingly, he made no
attempt to conceal his approach to the fort. He arrived near the place
in the night and sent some men forward who set fire to a log house
near the walls of the fort. If this was not enough warning to the
enemy, or of a dare to come out and fight, he ordered the drums to
beat the reveille around the camp in the morning. After that he lined
up his troops in battle array, as did Braddock before him, and sent up
some men near the fort, to draw plans of that structure in full view
of the enemy.
There was not a shot fired from the fort and no sound could be heard
within its walls. Not a soldier or an Indian could be seen.
The officers became sure that nothing more was needed but to send
forward the order for surrender. The soldiers were allowed to ground
their arms and be at ease. Suddenly the woods around them blazed with
the discharge of rifles. The dreaded warwhoop rang in their ears. The
tomahawk and scalping knife was in their midst. A second Braddock’s
defeat had begun. A panic-stricken rout began. Major Grant saved his
life by surrendering to a French officer, but most of his men were
dead and the rest scattered like wild animals.
Back of them a short distance was Captain Bullitt, who had been left
with fifty men to care for the army stores. He rallied together some
of the fugitives and they made a stand behind the baggage and wagons.
The Indians rushed forward and were momentarily checked by the sudden
fire of the ambushed men. Then, with the on-coming force of Indians
from back of the ones stopped, the rush came on.
Then Captain Bullitt held up a signal for surrender and the firing
ceased. The besieged men all came forward. When within eight yards of
the Indians waiting to receive their guns, Captain Bullitt gave the
order to fire, the guns having all been loaded for that purpose. From
this destructive volley at close range, the Indians fled in confusion,
and before they could rally, Captain Bullitt got his men and wagons
together, so protected as to make good their retreat.
General Forbes commended Captain Bullitt’s method of saving his troops
as “a matter of great admiration,” and rewarded him with a Major’s
commission. There has been much discussion as to whether such methods
made the Indians merciless or whether the merciless Indian required
such methods. The problem is doubtless as unprofitable now as it is
unanswerable, from any partisan point of view.