ON THE FRONTIER
While Washington was working his way through the learning purveyed
by Mr. Williams, he was also receiving another education, of a much
broader and better sort, from the men and women among whom he found
himself, and with whom he made friends. Chief among them was his
eldest brother, Lawrence, fourteen years his senior, who had been
educated in England, had fought with Vernon at Carthagena, and had
then returned to Virginia, to be to him a generous father and a loving
friend. As the head of the family, Lawrence Washington had received
the lion's share of the property, including the estate at Hunting
Creek, on the Potomac, which he christened Mount Vernon, after his
admiral, and where he settled down and built him a goodly house. To
this pleasant spot George Washington journeyed often in vacation
time, and there he came to live and further pursue his studies, after
leaving school in the autumn of 1747.
Lawrence Washington had married the daughter of William Fairfax, the
proprietor of Belvoir, a neighboring plantation, and the agent for
the vast estates held by his family in Virginia. George Fairfax, Mrs.
Washington's brother, had married a Miss Gary, and thus two large and
agreeable family connections were thrown open to the young surveyor
when he emerged from school. The chief figure, however, in that
pleasant winter of 1747-48, so far as an influence upon the character
of Washington is concerned, was the head of the family into which
Lawrence Washington had married. Thomas, Lord Fairfax, then sixty
years of age, had come to Virginia to live upon and look after the
kingdom which he had inherited in the wilderness. He came of a noble
and distinguished race. Graduating at Oxford with credit, he served in
the army, dabbled in literature, had his fling in the London world,
and was jilted by a beauty who preferred a duke, and gave her faithful
but less titled lover an apparently incurable wound. His life having
been thus early twisted and set awry, Lord Fairfax, when well past his
prime, had determined finally to come to Virginia, bury himself in the
forests, and look after the almost limitless possessions beyond the
Blue Ridge, which he had inherited from his maternal grandfather, Lord
Culpeper, of unsavory Restoration memory. It was a piece of great
good-fortune which threw in Washington's path this accomplished
gentleman, familiar with courts and camps, disappointed, but not
morose, disillusioned, but still kindly and generous. From him the boy
could gain that knowledge of men and manners which no school can give,
and which is as important in its way as any that a teacher can impart.
Lord Fairfax and Washington became fast friends. They hunted the fox
together, and hunted him hard. They engaged in all the rough sports
and perilous excitements which Virginia winter life could afford, and
the boy's bold and skillful riding, his love of sports and his fine
temper, commended him to the warm and affectionate interest of the old
nobleman. Other qualities, too, the experienced man of the world saw
in his young companion: a high and persistent courage, robust and calm
sense, and, above all, unusual force of will and character. Washington
impressed profoundly everybody with whom he was brought into personal
contact, a fact which is one of the most marked features of his
character and career, and one which deserves study more than almost
any other. Lord Fairfax was no exception to the rule. He saw in
Washington not simply a promising, brave, open-hearted boy, diligent
in practicing his profession, and whom he was anxious to help, but
something more; something which so impressed him that he confided to
this lad a task which, according to its performance, would affect both
his fortune and his peace. In a word, he trusted Washington, and told
him, as the spring of 1748 was opening, to go forth and survey the
vast Fairfax estates beyond the Ridge, define their boundaries, and
save them from future litigation. With this commission from Lord
Fairfax, Washington entered on the first period of his career. He
passed it on the frontier, fighting nature, the Indians, and the
French. He went in a schoolboy; he came out the first soldier in the
colonies, and one of the leading men of Virginia. Let us pause a
moment and look at him as he stands on the threshold of this momentous
period, rightly called momentous because it was the formative period
in the life of such a man.
[Illustration: LAWRENCE WASHINGTON]
He had just passed his sixteenth birthday. He was tall and muscular,
approaching the stature of more than six feet which he afterwards
attained. He was not yet filled out to manly proportions, but was
rather spare, after the fashion of youth. He had a well-shaped,
active figure, symmetrical except for the unusual length of the arms,
indicating uncommon strength. His light brown hair was drawn back from
a broad forehead, and grayish-blue eyes looked happily, and perhaps a
trifle soberly, on the pleasant Virginia world about him. The face was
open and manly, with a square, massive jaw, and a general expression
of calmness and strength. "Fair and florid," big and strong, he was,
take him for all in all, as fine a specimen of his race as could be
found in the English colonies.
Let us look a little closer through the keen eyes of one who studied
many faces to good purpose. The great painter of portraits, Gilbert
Stuart, tells us of Washington that he never saw in any man such large
eye-sockets, or such a breadth of nose and forehead between the
eyes, and that he read there the evidences of the strongest passions
possible to human nature. John Bernard the actor, a good observer,
too, saw in Washington's face, in 1797, the signs of an habitual
conflict and mastery of passions, witnessed by the compressed mouth
and deeply indented brow. The problem had been solved then; but in
1748, passion and will alike slumbered, and no man could tell which
would prevail, or whether they would work together to great purpose
or go jarring on to nothingness. He rises up to us out of the past in
that early springtime a fine, handsome, athletic boy, beloved by those
about him, who found him a charming companion and did not guess that
he might be a terribly dangerous foe. He rises up instinct with life
and strength, a being capable, as we know, of great things whether for
good or evil, with hot blood pulsing in his veins and beating in his
heart, with violent passions and relentless will still undeveloped;
and no one in all that jolly, generous Virginian society even dimly
dreamed what that development would be, or what it would mean to the
world.
It was in March, 1748, that George Fairfax and Washington set forth on
their adventures, and passing through Ashby's Gap in the Blue Ridge,
entered the valley of Virginia. Thence they worked their way up the
valley of the Shenandoah, surveying as they went, returned and swam
the swollen Potomac, surveyed the lands about its south branch and in
the mountainous region of Frederick County, and finally reached Mount
Vernon again on April 12. It was a rough experience for a beginner,
but a wholesome one, and furnished the usual vicissitudes of frontier
life. They were wet, cold, and hungry, or warm, dry, and well fed, by
turns. They slept in a tent, or the huts of the scattered settlers,
and oftener still beneath the stars. They met a war party of Indians,
and having plied them with liquor, watched one of their mad dances
round the camp-fire. In another place they came on a straggling
settlement of Germans, dull, patient, and illiterate, strangely unfit
for the life of the wilderness. All these things, as well as the
progress of their work and their various resting-places, Washington
noted down briefly but methodically in a diary, showing in these rough
notes the first evidences of that keen observation of nature and men
and of daily incidents which he developed to such good purpose in
after-life. There are no rhapsodies and no reflections in these hasty
jottings, but the employments and the discomforts are all set down in
a simple and matter-of-fact way, which omitted no essential thing and
excluded all that was worthless. His work, too, was well done, and
Lord Fairfax was so much pleased by the report that he moved across
the Blue Ridge, built a hunting lodge preparatory to something more
splendid which never came to pass, and laid out a noble manor, to
which he gave the name of Greenway Court. He also procured for
Washington an appointment as a public surveyor, which conferred
authority on his surveys and provided him with regular work. Thus
started, Washington toiled at his profession for three years, living
and working as he did on his first expedition. It was a rough life,
but a manly and robust one, and the men who live it, although often
rude and coarse, are never weak or effeminate. To Washington it was
an admirable school. It strengthened his muscles and hardened him to
exposure and fatigue. It accustomed him to risks and perils of various
kinds, and made him fertile in expedients and confident of himself,
while the nature of his work rendered him careful and industrious.
That his work was well done is shown by the fact that his surveys were
considered of the first authority, and stand unquestioned to this day,
like certain other work which he was subsequently called to do. It was
part of his character, when he did anything, to do it in a lasting
fashion, and it is worth while to remember that the surveys he made as
a boy were the best that could be made.
He wrote to a friend at this time: "Since you received my letter of
October last, I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed,
but, after walking a good deal all the day, I have lain down before
the fire upon a little hay, straw, fodder, or a bearskin, whichever
was to be had, with man, wife, and children, like dogs and cats; and
happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire. Nothing would make it
pass off tolerably but a good reward. A doubloon is my constant gain
every day that the weather will permit of my going out, and sometimes
six pistoles." He was evidently a thrifty lad, and honestly pleased
with honest earnings. He was no mere adventurous wanderer, but a man
working for results in money, reputation, or some solid value,
and while he worked and earned he kept an observant eye upon the
wilderness, and bought up when he could the best land for himself and
his family, laying the foundations of the great landed estate of which
he died possessed.
There was also a lighter and pleasanter side to this hard-working
existence, which was quite as useful, and more attractive, than
toiling in the woods and mountains. The young surveyor passed much of
his time at Greenway Court, hunting the fox and rejoicing in all field
sports which held high place in that kingdom, while at the same time
he profited much in graver fashion by his friendship with such a man
as Lord Fairfax. There, too, he had a chance at a library, and his
diaries show that he read carefully the history of England and the
essays of the "Spectator." Neither in early days nor at any other time
was he a student, for he had few opportunities, and his life from the
beginning was out of doors and among men. But the idea sometimes put
forward that Washington cared nothing for reading or for books is an
idle one. He read at Greenway Court and everywhere else when he had an
opportunity. He read well, too, and to some purpose, studying men and
events in books as he did in the world, for though he never talked of
his reading, preserving silence on that as on other things concerning
himself, no one ever was able to record an instance in which he showed
himself ignorant of history or of literature. He was never a learned
man, but so far as his own language could carry him he was an educated
one. Thus while he developed the sterner qualities by hard work and a
rough life, he did not bring back the coarse habits of the backwoods
and the camp-fire, but was able to refine his manners and improve his
mind in the excellent society and under the hospitable roof of Lord
Fairfax.
Three years slipped by, and then a domestic change came which much
affected Washington's whole life. The Carthagena campaign had
undermined the strength of Lawrence Washington and sown the seeds of
consumption, which showed itself in 1749, and became steadily more
alarming. A voyage to England and a summer at the warm springs were
tried without success, and finally, as a last resort, the invalid
sailed for the West Indies, in September, 1751. Thither his brother
George accompanied him, and we have the fragments of a diary kept
during this first and last wandering outside his native country. He
copied the log, noted the weather, and evidently strove to get some
idea of nautical matters while he was at sea and leading a life
strangely unfamiliar to a woodsman and pioneer. When they arrived at
their destination they were immediately asked to breakfast and dine
with Major Clarke, the military magnate of the place, and our young
Virginian remarked, with characteristic prudence and a certain touch
of grim humor, "We went,--myself with some reluctance, as the smallpox
was in the family." He fell a victim to his good manners, for two
weeks later he was "strongly attacked with the smallpox," and was
then housed for a month, getting safely and successfully through
this dangerous and then almost universal ordeal. Before the disease
declared itself, however, he went about everywhere, innocently
scattering infection, and greatly enjoying the pleasures of the
island. It is to be regretted that any part of this diary should have
been lost, for it is pleasant reading, and exhibits the writer in an
agreeable and characteristic fashion. He commented on the country and
the scenery, inveighed against the extravagance of the charges for
board and lodging, told of his dinner-parties and his friends, and
noted the marvelous abundance and variety of the tropical fruits,
which contrasted strangely with the British dishes of beefsteak and
tripe. He also mentioned being treated to a ticket to see the play of
"George Barnwell," on which he offered this cautious criticism:
"The character of Barnwell and several others were said to be well
performed. There was music adapted and regularly conducted."
Soon after his recovery Washington returned to Virginia, arriving
there in February, 1752. The diary concluded with a brief but
perfectly effective description of Barbadoes, touching on its
resources and scenery, its government and condition, and the manners
and customs of its inhabitants. All through these notes we find the
keenly observant spirit, and the evidence of a mind constantly alert
to learn. We see also a pleasant, happy temperament, enjoying with
hearty zest all the pleasures that youth and life could furnish. He
who wrote these lines was evidently a vigorous, good-humored young
fellow, with a quick eye for the world opening before him, and for the
delights as well as the instruction which it offered.
From the sunshine and ease of this tropical winter Washington passed
to a long season of trial and responsibility at home and abroad. In
July, 1752, his much-loved brother Lawrence died, leaving George
guardian of his daughter, and heir to his estates in the event of
that daughter's death. Thus the current of his home life changed, and
responsibility came into it, while outside the mighty stream of public
events changed too, and swept him along in the swelling torrent of a
world-wide war.
In all the vast wilderness beyond the mountains there was not room for
both French and English. The rival nations had been for years slowly
approaching each other, until in 1749 each people proceeded at last to
take possession of the Ohio country after its own fashion. The French
sent a military expedition which sank and nailed up leaden plates; the
English formed a great land company to speculate and make money, and
both set diligently to work to form Indian alliances. A man of far
less perception than Lawrence Washington, who had become the chief
manager of the Ohio Company, would have seen that the conditions on
the frontier rendered war inevitable, and he accordingly made ready
for the future by preparing his brother for the career of a soldier,
so far as it could be done. He brought to Mount Vernon two old
companions-in-arms of the Carthagena time, Adjutant Muse, a Virginian,
and Jacob Van Braam, a Dutch soldier of fortune. The former instructed
Washington in the art of war, tactics, and the manual of arms, the
latter in fencing and the sword exercise. At the same time Lawrence
Washington procured for his brother, then only nineteen years of age,
an appointment as one of the adjutants-general of Virginia, with the
rank of major. To all this the young surveyor took kindly enough so
far as we can tell, but his military avocations were interrupted by
his voyage to Barbadoes, by the illness and death of his brother, and
by the cares and responsibilities thereby thrust upon him.
Meantime the French aggressions had continued, and French soldiers and
traders were working their way up from the South and down from the
North, bullying and cajoling the Indians by turns, taking possession
of the Ohio country, and selecting places as they went for that
chain of forts which was to hem in and slowly strangle the English
settlements. Governor Dinwiddie had sent a commissioner to remonstrate
against these encroachments, but his envoy had stopped a hundred
and fifty miles short of the French posts, alarmed by the troublous
condition of things, and by the defeat and slaughter which the
Frenchmen had already inflicted upon the Indians. Some more vigorous
person was evidently needed to go through the form of warning France
not to trespass on the English wilderness, and thereupon Governor
Dinwiddie selected for the task George Washington, recently
reappointed adjutant-general of the northern division, and major in
the Virginian forces. He was a young man for such an undertaking, not
yet twenty-two, but clearly of good reputation. It is plain enough
that Lord Fairfax and others had said to the governor, "Here is the
very man for you; young, daring, and adventurous, but yet sober-minded
and responsible, who only lacks opportunity to show the stuff that is
in him."
Thus, then, in October, 1753, Washington set forth with Van Braam, and
various servants and horses, accompanied by the boldest of Virginian
frontiersmen, Christopher Gist. He wrote a report in the form of a
journal, which was sent to England and much read at the time as part
of the news of the day, and which has an equal although different
interest now. It is a succinct, clear, and sober narrative. The little
party was formed at Will's Creek, and thence through woods and over
swollen rivers made its way to Logstown. Here they spent some days
among the Indians, whose leaders Washington got within his grasp after
much speech-making; and here, too, he met some French deserters from
the South, and drew from them all the knowledge they possessed of New
Orleans and the military expeditions from that region. From Logstown
he pushed on, accompanied by his Indian chiefs, to Venango, on the
Ohio, the first French outpost. The French officers asked him to sup
with them. The wine flowed freely, the tongues of the hosts were
loosened, and the young Virginian, temperate and hard-headed, listened
to all the conversation, and noted down mentally much that was
interesting and valuable. The next morning the Indian chiefs,
prudently kept in the background, appeared, and a struggle ensued
between the talkative, clever Frenchmen and the quiet, persistent
Virginian, over the possession of these important savages. Finally
Washington got off, carrying his chiefs with him, and made his way
seventy miles further to the fort on French Creek. Here he delivered
the governor's letter, and while M. de St. Pierre wrote a vague and
polite answer, he sketched the fort and informed himself in regard to
the military condition of the post. Then came another struggle over
the Indians, and finally Washington got off with them once more, and
worked his way back to Venango. Another struggle for the savages
followed, rum being always the principal factor in the negotiation,
and at last the chiefs determined to stay behind. Nevertheless, the
work had been well done, and the important Half-King remained true to
the English cause.
Leaving his horses, Washington and Gist then took to the woods on
foot. The French Indians lay in wait for them and tried to murder
them, and Gist, like a true frontiersman, was for shooting the
scoundrel whom they captured. But Washington stayed his hand, and
they gave the savage the slip and pressed on. It was the middle of
December, very cold and stormy. In crossing a river, Washington fell
from the raft into deep water, amid the floating ice, but fought his
way out, and he and his companion passed the night on an island, with
their clothes frozen upon them. So through peril and privation, and
various dangers, stopping in the midst of it all to win another savage
potentate, they reached the edge of the settlements and thence went
on to Williamsburg, where great praise and glory were awarded to the
youthful envoy, the hero of the hour in the little Virginia capital.
It is worth while to pause over this expedition a moment and to
consider attentively this journal which recounts it, for there are
very few incidents or documents which tell us more of Washington. He
was not yet twenty-two when he faced this first grave responsibility,
and he did his work absolutely well. Cool courage, of course, he
showed, but also patience and wisdom in handling the Indians, a clear
sense that the crafty and well-trained Frenchmen could not blind, and
a strong faculty for dealing with men, always a rare and precious
gift. As in the little Barbadoes diary, so also in this journal,
we see, and far more strongly, the penetration and perception that
nothing could escape, and which set down all things essential and let
the "huddling silver, little worth," go by. The clearness, terseness,
and entire sufficiency of the narrative are obvious and lie on the
surface; but we find also another quality of the man which is one of
the most marked features in his character, and one which we must dwell
upon again and again, as we follow the story of his life. Here it
is that we learn directly for the first time that Washington was a
profoundly silent man. The gospel of silence has been preached in
these latter days by Carlyle, with the fervor of a seer and prophet,
and the world owes him a debt for the historical discredit which he
has brought upon the man of mere words as compared with the man of
deeds. Carlyle brushed Washington aside as "a bloodless Cromwell," a
phrase to which we must revert later on other grounds, and, as
has already been said, failed utterly to see that he was the most
supremely silent of the great men of action that the world can show.
Like Cromwell and Frederic, Washington wrote countless letters, made
many speeches, and was agreeable in conversation. But this was all in
the way of business, and a man may be profoundly silent and yet talk a
great deal. Silence in the fine and true sense is neither mere holding
of the tongue nor an incapacity of expression. The greatly silent man
is he who is not given to words for their own sake, and who never
talks about himself. Both Cromwell, greatest of Englishmen, and the
great Frederic, Carlyle's especial heroes, were fond of talking of
themselves. So in still larger measure was Napoleon, and many others
of less importance. But Washington differs from them all. He had
abundant power of words, and could use them with much force and point
when he was so minded, but he never used them needlessly or to hide
his meaning, and he never talked about himself. Hence the inestimable
difficulty of knowing him. A brief sentence here and there, a rare
gleam of light across the page of a letter, is all that we can find.
The rest is silence. He did as great work as has fallen to the lot of
man, he wrote volumes of correspondence, he talked with innumerable
men and women, and of himself he said nothing. Here in this youthful
journal we have a narrative of wild adventure, wily diplomacy, and
personal peril, impossible of condensation, and yet not a word of the
writer's thoughts or feelings. All that was done or said important to
the business in hand was set down, and nothing was overlooked, but
that is all. The work was done, and we know how it was done, but the
man is silent as to all else. Here, indeed, is the man of action and
of real silence, a character to be much admired and wondered at in
these or any other days.
Washington's report looked like war, and its author was shortly
afterwards appointed lieutenant-colonel of a Virginian regiment,
Colonel Fry commanding. Now began that long experience of human
stupidity and inefficiency with which Washington was destined to
struggle through all the years of his military career, suffering from
them, and triumphing in spite of them to a degree unequaled by any
other great commander. Dinwiddie, the Scotch governor, was eager
enough to fight, and full of energy and good intentions, but he was
hasty and not overwise, and was filled with an excessive idea of his
prerogatives. The assembly, on its side, was sufficiently patriotic,
but its members came from a community which for more than half a
century had had no fighting, and they knew nothing of war or its
necessities. Unaccustomed to the large affairs into which they were
suddenly plunged, they displayed a narrow and provincial spirit.
Keenly alive to their own rights and privileges, they were more
occupied in quarreling with Dinwiddie than in prosecuting the war. In
the weak proprietary governments of Maryland and Pennsylvania there
was the same condition of affairs, with every evil exaggerated
tenfold. The fighting spirit was dominant in Virginia, but in
Quaker-ridden Pennsylvania it seems to have been almost extinct. These
three were not very promising communities to look to for support in a
difficult and costly war.
With all this inertia and stupidity Washington was called to cope, and
he rebelled against it in vigorous fashion. Leaving Colonel Fry to
follow with the main body of troops, Washington set out on April 2,
1754, with two companies from Alexandria, where he had been recruiting
amidst most irritating difficulties. He reached Will's Creek three
weeks later; and then his real troubles began. Captain Trent, the
timid and halting envoy, who had failed to reach the French, had been
sent out by the wise authorities to build a fort at the junction of
the Alleghany and Monongahela, on the admirable site selected by the
keen eye of Washington. There Trent left his men and returned to
Will's Creek, where Washington found him, but without the pack-horses
that he had promised to provide. Presently news came that the French
in overwhelming numbers had swept down upon Trent's little party,
captured their fort, and sent them packing back to Virginia.
Washington took this to be war, and determined at once to march
against the enemy. Having impressed from the inhabitants, who were not
bubbling over with patriotism, some horses and wagons, he set out on
his toilsome march across the mountains.
It was a wild and desolate region, and progress was extremely slow.
By May 9 he was at the Little Meadows, twenty miles from his
starting-place; by the 18th at the Youghiogany River, which he
explored and found unnavigable. He was therefore forced to take up his
weary march again for the Monongahela, and by the 27th he was at the
Great Meadows, a few miles further on. The extreme danger of his
position does not seem to have occurred to him, but he was harassed
and angered by the conduct of the assembly. He wrote to Governor
Dinwiddie that he had no idea of giving up his commission. "But," he
continued, "let me serve voluntarily; then I will, with the greatest
pleasure in life, devote my services to the expedition, without any
other reward than the satisfaction of serving my country; but to be
slaving dangerously for the shadow of pay, through woods, rocks,
mountains,--I would rather prefer the great toil of a daily laborer,
and dig for a maintenance, provided I were reduced to the necessity,
than serve upon such ignoble terms; for I really do not see why the
lives of his Majesty's subjects in Virginia should be of less value
than those in other parts of his American dominions, especially when
it is well known that we must undergo double their hardship." Here we
have a high-spirited, high-tempered young gentleman, with a contempt
for shams that it is pleasant to see, and evidently endowed also with
a fine taste for fighting and not too much patience.
Indignant letters written in vigorous language were, however, of
little avail, and Washington prepared to shift for himself as best he
might. His Indian allies brought him news that the French were on the
march and had thrown out scouting parties. Picking out a place in the
Great Meadows for a fort, "a charming field for an encounter," he in
his turn sent out a scouting party, and then on fresh intelligence
from the Indians set forth himself with forty men to find the enemy.
After a toilsome march they discovered their foes in camp. The French,
surprised and surrounded, sprang to arms, the Virginians fired, there
was a sharp exchange of shots, and all was over. Ten of the French
were killed and twenty-one were taken prisoners, only one of the party
escaping to carry back the news.
This little skirmish made a prodigious noise in its day, and was much
heralded in France. The French declared that Jumonville, the leader,
who fell at the first fire, was foully assassinated, and that he and
his party were ambassadors and sacred characters. Paris rang with this
fresh instance of British perfidy, and a M. Thomas celebrated the
luckless Jumonville in a solemn epic poem in four books. French
historians, relying on the account of the Canadian who escaped,
adopted the same tone, and at a later day mourned over this black
spot on Washington's character. The French view was simple nonsense.
Jumonville and his party, as the papers found on Jumonville showed,
were out on a spying and scouting expedition. They were seeking to
surprise the English when the English surprised them, with the usual
backwoods result. The affair has a dramatic interest because it was
the first blood shed in a great struggle, and was the beginning of a
series of world-wide wars and social and political convulsions, which
terminated more than half a century later on the plains of Waterloo.
It gave immortality to an obscure French officer by linking his name
with that of his opponent, and brought Washington for the moment
before the eyes of the world, which little dreamed that this Virginian
colonel was destined to be one of the principal figures in the great
revolutionary drama to which the war then beginning was but the
prologue.
Washington, for his part, well satisfied with his exploit, retraced
his steps, and having sent his prisoners back to Virginia, proceeded
to consider his situation. It was not a very cheerful prospect.
Contrecoeur, with the main body of the French and Indians, was moving
down from the Monongahela a thousand strong. This of course was to
have been anticipated, and it does not seem to have in the least
damped Washington's spirits. His blood was up, his fighting temper
thoroughly roused, and he prepared to push on. Colonel Fry had died
meanwhile, leaving Washington in command; but his troops came forward,
and also not long after a useless "independent" company from South
Carolina. Thus reinforced Washington advanced painfully some thirteen
miles, and then receiving sure intelligence of the approach of the
French in great force fell back with difficulty to the Great Meadows,
where he was obliged by the exhausted condition of his men to stop. He
at once resumed work on Fort Necessity, and made ready for a desperate
defense, for the French were on his heels, and on July 3 appeared at
the Meadows. Washington offered battle outside the fort, and this
being declined withdrew to his trenches, and skirmishing went on all
day. When night fell it was apparent that the end had come. The men
were starved and worn out. Their muskets in many cases were rendered
useless by the rain, and their ammunition was spent. The Indians had
deserted, and the foe outnumbered them four to one. When the French
therefore offered a parley, Washington was forced reluctantly to
accept. The French had no stomach for the fight, apparently, and
allowed the English to go with their arms, exacting nothing but a
pledge that for a year they would not come to the Ohio.
So ended Washington's first campaign. His friend the Half-King, the
celebrated Seneca chief, Thanacarishon, who prudently departed on the
arrival of the French, has left us a candid opinion of Washington and
his opponents. "The colonel," he said, "was a good-natured man, but
had no experience; he took upon him to command the Indians as his
slaves, and would have them every day upon the scout and to attack
the enemy by themselves, but would by no means take advice from the
Indians. He lay in one place from one full moon to the other, without
making any fortifications, except that little thing on the meadow;
whereas, had he taken advice, and built such fortifications as I
advised him, he might easily have beat off the French. But the French
in the engagement acted like cowards, and the English like fools."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Enquiry into the Causes and Alienations of the Delaware
and Shawanee Indians_, etc. London, 1759. By Charles Thomson,
afterwards Secretary of Congress.]
There is a deal of truth in this opinion. The whole expedition was
rash in the extreme. When Washington left Will's Creek he was aware
that he was going to meet a force of a thousand men with only a
hundred and fifty raw recruits at his back. In the same spirit he
pushed on; and after the Jumonville affair, although he knew that the
wilderness about him was swarming with enemies, he still struggled
forward. When forced to retreat he made a stand at the Meadows and
offered battle in the open to his more numerous and more prudent
foes, for he was one of those men who by nature regard courage as a
substitute for everything, and who have a contempt for hostile odds.
He was ready to meet any number of French and Indians with cheerful
confidence and with real pleasure. He wrote, in a letter which
soon became famous, that he loved to hear bullets whistle, a sage
observation which he set down in later years as a folly of youth. Yet
this boyish outburst, foolish as it was, has a meaning to us, for it
was essentially true. Washington had the fierce fighting temper of the
Northmen. He loved battle and danger, and he never ceased to love them
and to give way to their excitement, although he did not again set
down such sentiments in boastful phrase that made the world laugh.
Men of such temper, moreover, are naturally imperious and have a fine
disregard of consequences, with the result that their allies, Indian
or otherwise, often become impatient and finally useless. The campaign
was perfectly wild from the outset, and if it had not been for
the utter indifference to danger displayed by Washington, and the
consequent timidity of the French, that particular body of Virginians
would have been permanently lost to the British Empire.
But we learn from all this many things. It appears that Washington was
not merely a brave man, but one who loved fighting for its own sake.
The whole expedition shows an arbitrary temper and the most reckless
courage, valuable qualities, but here unrestrained, and mixed
with very little prudence. Some important lessons were learned by
Washington from the rough teachings of inexorable and unconquerable
facts. He received in this campaign the first taste of that severe
experience which by its training developed the self-control and
mastery of temper for which he became so remarkable. He did not spring
into life a perfect and impossible man, as is so often represented. On
the contrary, he was educated by circumstances; but the metal came out
of the furnace of experience finely tempered, because it was by nature
of the best and with but little dross to be purged away. In addition
to all this he acquired for the moment what would now be called a
European reputation. He was known in Paris as an assassin, and in
England, thanks to the bullet letter, as a "fanfaron" and brave
braggart. With these results he wended his way home much depressed in
spirits, but not in the least discouraged, and fonder of fighting than
ever.
Virginia, however, took a kinder view of the campaign than did her
defeated soldier. She appreciated the gallantry of the offer to fight
in the open and the general conduct of the troops, and her House of
Burgesses passed a vote of thanks to Washington and his officers, and
gave money to his men. In August he rejoined his regiment, only to
renew the vain struggle against incompetence and extravagance, and as
if this were not enough, his sense of honor was wounded and his temper
much irritated by the governor's playing false to the prisoners taken
in the Jumonville fight. While thus engaged, news came that the French
were off their guard at Fort Duquesne, and Dinwiddie was for having
the regiment of undisciplined troops march again into the wilderness.
Washington, however, had learned something, if not a great deal, and
he demonstrated the folly of such an attempt in a manner too clear to
be confuted.
Meantime the Burgesses came together, and more money being voted,
Dinwiddie hit on a notable plan for quieting dissensions between
regulars and provincials by dividing all the troops into independent
companies, with no officer higher than a captain. Washington, the
only officer who had seen fighting and led a regiment, resented quite
properly this senseless policy, and resigning his commission withdrew
to Mount Vernon to manage the estate and attend to his own affairs. He
was driven to this course still more strongly by the original cause of
Dinwiddie's arrangement. The English government had issued an order
that officers holding the king's commission should rank provincial
officers, and that provincial generals and field officers should have
no rank when a general or field officer holding a royal commission was
present. The degradation of being ranked by every whipper-snapper who
might hold a royal commission by virtue, perhaps, of being the bastard
son of some nobleman's cast-off mistress was more than the temper
of George Washington at least could bear, and when Governor Sharpe,
general by the king's commission, and eager to secure the services
of the best fighter in Virginia, offered him a company and urged his
acceptance, he replied in language that must have somewhat astonished
his excellency. "You make mention in your letter," he wrote to Colonel
Fitzhugh, Governor Sharpe's second in command, "of my continuing in
the service, and retaining my colonel's commission. This idea has
filled me with surprise; for, if you think me capable of holding a
commission that has neither rank nor emolument annexed to it, you must
entertain a very contemptible opinion of my weakness, and believe
me to be more empty than the commission itself.... In short, every
captain bearing the king's commission, every half-pay officer, or
others, appearing with such a commission, would rank before me.... Yet
my inclinations are strongly bent to arms."
It was a bitter disappointment to withdraw from military life, but
Washington had an intense sense of personal dignity; not the small
vanity of a petty mind, but the quality of a proud man conscious of
his own strength and purpose. It was of immense value to the American
people at a later day, and there is something very instructive in this
early revolt against the stupid arrogance which England has always
thought it wise to display toward this country. She has paid dearly
for indulging it, but it has seldom cost her more than when it drove
Washington from her service, and left in his mind a sense of indignity
and injustice.
Meantime this Virginian campaigning had started a great movement.
England was aroused, and it was determined to assail France in Nova
Scotia, from New York and on the Ohio. In accordance with this plan
General Braddock arrived in Virginia February 20, 1755, with two
picked regiments, and encamped at Alexandria. Thither Washington used
to ride and look longingly at the pomp and glitter, and wish that he
wore engaged in the service. Presently this desire became known, and
Braddock, hearing of the young Virginian's past experience, offered
him a place on his staff with the rank of colonel where he would
be subject only to the orders of the general, and could serve as a
volunteer. He therefore accepted at once, and threw himself into
his new duties with hearty good-will. Every step now was full of
instruction. At Annapolis he met the governors of the other
colonies, and was interested and attracted by this association with
distinguished public men. In the army to which he was attached he
studied with the deepest attention the best discipline of Europe,
observing everything and forgetting nothing, thus preparing himself
unconsciously to use against his teachers the knowledge he acquired.
He also made warm friends with the English officers, and was treated
with consideration by his commander. The universal practice of all
Englishmen at that time was to behave contemptuously to the colonists,
but there was something about Washington which made this impossible.
They all treated him with the utmost courtesy, vaguely conscious that
beneath the pleasant, quiet manner there was a strength of character
and ability such as is rarely found, and that this was a man whom it
was unsafe to affront. There is no stronger instance of Washington's
power of impressing himself upon others than that he commanded now
the respect and affection of his general, who was the last man to be
easily or favorably affected by a young provincial officer.
Edward Braddock was a veteran soldier, a skilled disciplinarian, and a
rigid martinet. He was narrow-minded, brutal, and brave. He had led a
fast life in society, indulging in coarse and violent dissipations,
and was proud with the intense pride of a limited intelligence and a
nature incapable of physical fear. It would be difficult to conceive
of a man more unfit to be entrusted with the task of marching through
the wilderness and sweeping the French from the Ohio. All the
conditions which confronted him were unfamiliar and beyond his
experience. He cordially despised the provincials who were essential
to his success, and lost no opportunity of showing his contempt for
them. The colonists on their side, especially in Pennsylvania, gave
him, unfortunately, only too much ground for irritation and disgust.
They were delighted to see this brilliant force come from England to
fight their battles, but they kept on wrangling and holding back,
refusing money and supplies, and doing nothing. Braddock chafed and
delayed, swore angrily, and lingered still. Washington strove to help
him, but defended his country fearlessly against wholesale and furious
attacks.
Finally the army began to move, but so slowly and after so much delay
that they did not reach Will's Creek until the middle of May. Here
came another exasperating pause, relieved only by Franklin, who,
by giving his own time, ability, and money, supplied the necessary
wagons. Then they pushed on again, but with the utmost slowness. With
supreme difficulty they made an elaborate road over the mountains as
they marched, and did not reach the Little Meadows until June 16. Then
at last Braddock turned to his young aide for the counsel which had
already been proffered and rejected many times. Washington advised the
division of the army, so that the main body could hurry forward in
light marching order while a detachment remained behind and brought
up the heavy baggage. This plan was adopted, and the army started
forward, still too heavily burdened, as Washington thought, but in
somewhat better trim for the wilderness than before. Their progress,
quickened as it was, still seemed slow to Washington, but he was taken
ill with a fever, and finally was compelled by Braddock to stop for
rest at the ford of Youghiogany. He made Braddock promise that he
should be brought up before the army reached Fort Duquesne, and wrote
to his friend Orme that he would not miss the impending battle for
five hundred pounds.
As soon as his fever abated a little he left Colonel Dunbar, and,
being unable to sit on a horse, was conveyed to the front in a wagon,
coming up with the army on July 8. He was just in time, for the next
day the troops forded the Monongahela and marched to attack the fort.
The splendid appearance of the soldiers as they crossed the river
roused Washington's enthusiasm; but he was not without misgivings.
Franklin had already warned Braddock against the danger of surprise,
and had been told with a sneer that while these savages might be
a formidable enemy to raw American militia, they could make no
impression on disciplined troops. Now at the last moment Washington
warned the general again and was angrily rebuked.
The troops marched on in ordered ranks, glittering and beautiful.
Suddenly firing was heard in the front, and presently the van was
flung back on the main body. Yells and war-whoops resounded on every
side, and an unseen enemy poured in a deadly fire. Washington begged
Braddock to throw his men into the woods, but all in vain. Fight in
platoons they must, or not at all. The result was that they did not
fight at all. They became panic-stricken, and huddled together,
overcome with fear, until at last when Braddock was mortally wounded
they broke in wild rout and fled. Of the regular troops, seven
hundred, and of the officers, who showed the utmost bravery, sixty-two
out of eighty-six, were killed or wounded. Two hundred Frenchmen and
six hundred Indians achieved this signal victory. The only thing
that could be called fighting on the English side was done by
the Virginians, "the raw American militia," who, spread out as
skirmishers, met their foes on their own ground, and were cut off
after a desperate resistance almost to a man.
Washington at the outset flung himself headlong into the fight. He
rode up and down the field, carrying orders and striving to rally "the
dastards," as he afterwards called the regular troops. He endeavored
to bring up the artillery, but the men would not serve the guns,
although to set an example he aimed and discharged one himself. All
through that dreadful carnage he rode fiercely about, raging with the
excitement of battle, and utterly exposed from beginning to end. Even
now it makes the heart beat quicker to think of him amid the smoke and
slaughter as he dashed hither and thither, his face glowing and his
eyes shining with the fierce light of battle, leading on his own
Virginians, and trying to stay the tide of disaster. He had two horses
shot under him and four bullets through his coat. The Indians thought
he bore a charmed life, while his death was reported in the colonies,
together with his dying speech, which, he dryly wrote to his brother,
he had not yet composed.
When the troops broke it was Washington who gathered the fugitives and
brought off the dying general. It was he who rode on to meet Dunbar,
and rallying the fugitives enabled the wretched remnants to take up
their march for the settlements. He it was who laid Braddock in the
grave four days after the defeat, and read over the dead the solemn
words of the English service. Wise, sensible, and active in the
advance, splendidly reckless on the day of battle, cool and collected
on the retreat, Washington alone emerged from that history of disaster
with added glory. Again he comes before us as, above all things,
the fighting man, hot-blooded and fierce in action, and utterly
indifferent to the danger which excited and delighted him. But the
earlier lesson had not been useless. He now showed a prudence and
wisdom in counsel which were not apparent in the first of his
campaigns, and he no longer thought that mere courage was
all-sufficient, or that any enemy could be despised. He was plainly
one of those who could learn. His first experience had borne good
fruit, and now he had been taught a series of fresh and valuable
lessons. Before his eyes had been displayed the most brilliant
European discipline, both in camp and on the march. He had studied
and absorbed it all, talking with veterans and hearing from them many
things that he could have acquired nowhere else. Once more had he
been taught, in a way not to be forgotten, that it is never well to
underrate one's opponent. He had looked deeper, too, and had seen what
the whole continent soon understood, that English troops were not
invincible, that they could be beaten by Indians, and that they were
after all much like other men. This was the knowledge, fatal in
after days to British supremacy, which Braddock's defeat brought to
Washington and to the colonists, and which was never forgotten. Could
he have looked into the future, he would have seen also in this
ill-fated expedition an epitome of much future history. The expedition
began with stupid contempt toward America and all things American, and
ended in ruin and defeat. It was a bitter experience, much heeded by
the colonists, but disregarded by England, whose indifference was paid
for at a heavy cost.
After the hasty retreat, Colonel Dunbar, stricken with panic, fled
onward to Philadelphia, abandoning everything, and Virginia was left
naturally in a state of great alarm. The assembly came together, and
at last, thoroughly frightened, voted abundant money, and ordered a
regiment of a thousand men to be raised. Washington, who had returned
to Mount Vernon ill and worn-out, was urged to solicit the command,
but it was not his way to solicit, and he declined to do so now.
August 14, he wrote to his mother: "If it is in my power to avoid
going to the Ohio again, I shall; but if the command is pressed upon
me by the general voice of the country, and offered upon such terms as
cannot be objected against, it would reflect dishonor on me to refuse
it." The same day he was offered the command of all the Virginian
forces on his own terms, and accepted. Virginia believed in
Washington, and he was ready to obey her call.
He at once assumed command and betook himself to Winchester, a general
without an army, but still able to check by his presence the existing
panic, and ready to enter upon the trying, dreary, and fruitless work
that lay before him. In April, 1757, he wrote: "I have been posted
then, for more than twenty months past, upon our cold and barren
frontiers, to perform, I think I may say, impossibilities; that is, to
protect from the cruel incursions of a crafty, savage enemy a line of
inhabitants, of more than three hundred and fifty miles in extent,
with a force inadequate to the task." This terse statement covers
all that can be said of the next three years. It was a long struggle
against a savage foe in front, and narrowness, jealousy, and stupidity
behind; apparently without any chance of effecting anything, or
gaining any glory or reward. Troops were voted, but were raised with
difficulty, and when raised were neglected and ill-treated by the
wrangling governor and assembly, which caused much ill-suppressed
wrath in the breast of the commander-in-chief, who labored day and
night to bring about better discipline in camp, and who wrote long
letters to Williamsburg recounting existing evils and praying for a
new militia law.
The troops, in fact, were got out with vast difficulty even under the
most stinging necessity, and were almost worthless when they came.
Of one "noble captain" who refused to come, Washington wrote: "With
coolness and moderation this great captain answered that his wife,
family, and corn were all at stake; so were those of his soldiers;
therefore it was impossible for him to come. Such is the example
of the officers; such the behavior of the men; and upon such
circumstances depends the safety of our country!" But while the
soldiers were neglected, and the assembly faltered, and the militia
disobeyed, the French and Indians kept at work on the long, exposed
frontier. There panic reigned, farmhouses and villages went up in
smoke, and the fields were reddened with slaughter at each fresh
incursion. Gentlemen in Williamsburg bore these misfortunes with
reasonable fortitude, but Washington raged against the abuses and the
inaction, and vowed that nothing but the imminent danger prevented his
resignation. "The supplicating tears of the women," he wrote, "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." This is one of the rare flashes
of personal feeling which disclose the real man, warm of heart and
temper, full of human sympathy, and giving vent to hot indignation in
words which still ring clear and strong across the century that has
come and gone.
Serious troubles, moreover, were complicated by petty annoyances. A
Maryland captain, at the head of thirty men, undertook to claim rank
over the Virginian commander-in-chief because he had held a king's
commission; and Washington was obliged to travel to Boston in order to
have the miserable thing set right by Governor Shirley. This affair
settled, he returned to take up again the old disheartening struggle,
and his outspoken condemnation of Dinwiddie's foolish schemes and of
the shortcomings of the government began to raise up backbiters
and malcontents at Williamsburg. "My orders," he said, "are dark,
doubtful, and uncertain; to-day approved, to-morrow condemned. Left
to act and proceed at hazard, accountable for the consequences, and
blamed without the benefit of defense." He determined nevertheless
to bear with his trials until the arrival of Lord Loudon, the new
commander-in-chief, from whom he expected vigor and improvement.
Unfortunately he was destined to have only fresh disappointment from
the new general, for Lord Loudon was merely one more incompetent man
added to the existing confusion. He paid no heed to the South, matters
continued to go badly in the North, and Virginia was left helpless. So
Washington toiled on with much discouragement, and the disagreeable
attacks upon him increased. That it should have been so is not
surprising, for he wrote to the governor, who now held him in much
disfavor, to the speaker, and indeed to every one, with a most galling
plainness. He was only twenty-five, be it remembered, and his high
temper was by no means under perfect control. He was anything but
diplomatic at that period of his life, and was far from patient, using
language with much sincerity and force, and indulging in a blunt irony
of rather a ferocious kind. When he was accused finally of getting up
reports of imaginary dangers, his temper gave way entirely. He wrote
wrathfully to the governor for justice, and added in a letter to
his friend, Captain Peachey: "As to Colonel C.'s gross and infamous
reflections on my conduct last spring, it will be needless, I dare
say, to observe further at this time than that the liberty which he
has been pleased to allow himself in sporting with my character is
little else than a comic entertainment, discovering at one view his
passionate fondness for your friend, his inviolable love of truth,
his unfathomable knowledge, and the masterly strokes of his wisdom in
displaying it. You are heartily welcome to make use of any letter or
letters which I may at any time have written to you; for although
I keep no copies of epistles to my friends, nor can remember the
contents of all of them, yet I am sensible that the narrations are
just, and that truth and honesty will appear in my writings; of which,
therefore, I shall not be ashamed, though criticism may censure my
style."
Perhaps a little more patience would have produced better results,
but it is pleasant to find one man, in that period of stupidity and
incompetency, who was ready to free his mind in this refreshing way.
The only wonder is that he was not driven from his command. That they
insisted on keeping him there shows beyond everything that he
had already impressed himself so strongly on Virginia that the
authorities, although they smarted under his attacks, did not dare to
meddle with him. Dinwiddie and the rest could foil him in obtaining a
commission in the king's army, but they could not shake his hold upon
the people.
In the winter of 1758 his health broke down completely. He was so
ill that he thought that his constitution was seriously injured;
and therefore withdrew to Mount Vernon, where he slowly recovered.
Meantime a great man came at last to the head of affairs in England,
and inspired by William Pitt, fleets and armies went forth to conquer.
Reviving at the prospect, Washington offered his services to General
Forbes, who had come to undertake the task which Braddock had failed
to accomplish. Once more English troops appeared, and a large army
was gathered. Then the old story began again, and Washington, whose
proffered aid had been gladly received, chafed and worried all summer
at the fresh spectacle of delay and stupidity which was presented
to him. His advice was disregarded, and all the weary business of
building new roads through the wilderness was once more undertaken. A
detachment, sent forward contrary to his views, met with the fate of
Braddock, and as the summer passed, and autumn changed to winter, it
looked as if nothing would be gained in return for so much toil and
preparation. But Pitt had conquered the Ohio in Canada, news arrived
of the withdrawal of the French, the army pressed on, and, with
Washington in the van, marched into the smoking ruins of Fort
Duquesne, henceforth to be known to the world as Fort Pitt.
So closed the first period in Washington's public career. We have seen
him pass through it in all its phases. It shows him as an adventurous
pioneer, as a reckless frontier fighter, and as a soldier of great
promise. He learned many things in this time, and was taught much in
the hard school of adversity. In the effort to conquer Frenchmen and
Indians he studied the art of war, and at the same time he learned
to bear with and to overcome the dullness and inefficiency of the
government he served. Thus he was forced to practise self-control in
order to attain his ends, and to acquire skill in the management of
men. There could have been no better training for the work he was to
do in the after years, and the future showed how deeply he profited by
it. Let us turn now, for a moment, to the softer and pleasanter side
of life, and having seen what Washington was, and what he did as a
fighting man, let us try to know him in the equally important and far
more attractive domain of private and domestic life.