_The French War._
Braddock’s Army--Washington Resigns, accepts the office of Aide to
Braddock--Interview with Franklin--Crossing the Mountains--The
Ambush--The warnings of Washington--The Attack--Events of the
Battle--Peril and Bravery of Washington--The Rout--Narrative of
Colonel Smith--Indian Strategy--Scenes at Fort Duquesne--The
Indian War-cries--The Gold Seal--What Washington had
gained--Spirit of the Savages--Washington’s statement--Scenes
of woe.
War between France and England had now became inevitable. The British
cabinet, being resolved to drive the French from the continent of North
America, had not only no apology to offer for her untoward military
movement, but immediately made new and more formidable preparations
for the accomplishment of her determined purpose. The task seemed not
difficult; for the rapidly growing English colonies, scattered along
the Atlantic coast, contained a population greatly outnumbering those
gathered around the settlements on the banks of the St. Lawrence,
and the few military and trading posts which were established on the
borders of the great lakes, and in the valley of the Ohio.[34]
On the other hand, the pride of the court of France required that it
should not submit to indignity; neither could France yield to the
arrogant demands of the English, and surrender, at their dictation,
territory which she had long considered as beyond all legitimate
question her own. Thus the warfare became essentially one of attack
on the part of England, one of defence on the part of France. England
was to organize armies and send them across the mountains, to drive
the French from the valley of the Ohio. France was to strengthen her
fortresses in the valley so as to repel and drive back the invaders.
Both nations did everything in their power to enlist the Indians
warriors beneath their banners.
In the spring of the year 1755, the British government sent two
regiments of regular troops from England, to cross the wilderness of
the Alleghanies, and wrest Fort Duquesne from the French. The highly
disciplined troops were well instructed in the tactics of European
battle-fields, but were entirely unacquainted with Indian strategy, and
were quite unprepared to cope with the difficulties of Indian warfare.
General Braddock, a proud, self-conceited Englishman, who despised all
other nationalities, and who had a thorough contempt for the military
ability of the Americans, was placed in command.
“Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty look before a fall.” He
was too proud to learn from those who were abundantly able to teach
him. He was too haughty to listen to any warnings of danger from those
who were far wiser than himself, but whom he regarded as ignorant and
cowardly. He, in command of well drilled British regulars, had nothing
to fear and nothing to learn from colonists, Frenchmen, or Indians.
General Braddock, at the head of his two highly disciplined and well
uniformed regiments, commenced his march across the wide, rugged
mountain ranges. From the eastern declivities, where the water
commenced running into the Atlantic, to the western slopes where the
gushing springs flowed into the Ohio, was a distance of more than one
hundred miles. The path was narrow. In many places torrents were to
be bridged, obstructions removed, and the trail widened through the
vast masses of rock, by the corps of engineers. Thus there would be
presented to the keen eyes of the Indians, who were sent by the French,
to watch and report the progress of the foe, a straggling, broken line
of men and wagons four miles in length.
There was something exceedingly exasperating in the contemptuous manner
in which the British court and cabinet treated the colonial officers.
It seemed to be, with them, an established principle that an Englishman
must, of necessity, be superior to an American. Governor Dinwiddie
reduced Colonel Washington to the rank of a captain, and placed over
him officers whom he had commanded. This degradation was, of course,
not to be submitted to by a high-minded man. Washington at once
resigned his commission, and retired from the army.
Governor Sharpe, the crown-appointed Governor of Maryland, received,
from the king, the appointment of Commander-in-Chief of the forces
employed against the French. He was well acquainted with Washington’s
exalted character, and valuable experience, and yet he had the
presumption to write, urging him to accept the office of _captain_ of
a Virginia company, intimating to him that he might nominally hold his
former commission as colonel. Washington replied:
“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.”
When General Braddock landed at Alexandria, in Virginia, with his two
regiments, hearing of the fame of Washington, and of his previous
excursions across the mountains, he invited him to take part in the
campaign, as one of his staff, retaining his former rank. The chivalric
spirit of Washington was roused; for the pageantry of war was quite
conspicuous from his quiet retreat at Mount Vernon.
British ships of war, with their gay banners, and transports crowded
with troops, were continually sailing by his door, to Alexandria, which
was but a few miles above. The booming of cannon, and the music of
well-trained bands, woke the echoes of those vast forests. Washington
mounted his horse, and rode to Alexandria. The love of adventure,
of heroic military achievements, inspired him. He eagerly accepted
the offer of Braddock, to become a member of the general’s military
household, but without any emolument or any distinct command. The
position recognized his full rank, and gave him the opportunity of
acquiring new experience, and of becoming acquainted with the highest
principles of martial tactics as then practised by the armies of Europe.
His widowed mother entreated him not again to expose himself to the
perils of a campaign. But he found the temptation too strong to be
resisted. On the 20th of April, 1755, the army commenced its march,
from Alexandria. Washington was announced as one of the general’s
aides. Benjamin Franklin, then forty-nine years of age, visited the
army when it had reached Fredericktown. Braddock was so confident of
the success of the expedition, that he said to Franklin:
“After taking Duquesne, I shall proceed to Niagara; and having taken
that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time. And I suppose it
will, for Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days. Then
I can see nothing which can obstruct my march to Niagara.”[35]
Franklin, with his customary good sense and modesty, replied, “To be
sure, sir, if you arrive well before Duquesne, with these fine troops,
so well provided with artillery, the fort, though completely fortified,
and assisted with a very strong garrison, can probably make but a
very short resistance. The only danger I apprehend, of obstruction to
your march, is from the ambuscades of the Indians, who, by constant
practice, are dexterous in laying and executing them. And the slender
line, nearly four miles long, which your army must make, may expose it
to be attacked by surprise on its flanks, and to be cut, like thread,
into several pieces, which, from their distance, cannot come up in time
to support one another.”
Franklin adds, “He smiled at my ignorance, and replied, ‘These savages
may indeed be a formidable enemy to raw American militia, but upon
the king’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they
should make any impression.’
“I was conscious of an impropriety in my disputing with a military man
on matters of his profession, and said no more.”[36]
There were many delays; and it was not until the 20th of May, that the
army reached Wills’ Creek, where there was a frontier post called Fort
Cumberland. Here again there were delays, which Washington deemed the
result of want of judgment. On the 10th of June, the march was resumed,
and the army commenced, what Washington called, “the tremendous
undertaking,” of dragging the artillery and the heavily-laded wagons up
the steep and rugged mountain road, which the engineers had been sent
forward to open.
Washington very strongly disapproved of the great number of horses
and wagons required by the officers for the transportation of their
baggage, with many needless luxuries. He was astonished and appalled
at the recklessness with which the march was conducted; and he could
not refrain from warning his superior officer of the peril to which the
army was exposed in its thin line several miles in extent.
“The French officers,” said he, “through their Indian runners, will
keep themselves informed of every step of our progress. The eyes of
these savage scouts, from the glooms of the forest and the distant
crags, are continually fixed upon us. We are in danger, every hour, of
falling into an ambush, when our men and horses will be shot down by
volleys of bullets from an invisible foe. And that foe can instantly
take flight, beyond all possibility of pursuit. The French officers
can lead hundreds of the savage warriors to plunge, in a sudden onset,
upon our straggling line, and striking fiercely on the right and left,
plunder and burn many wagons, throw the whole line into confusion, and
retire unharmed, before it will be possible to concentrate any force to
repel them.”
It would seem that such suggestions would be obvious to any man of
ordinary intelligence. General Braddock, with a smile of incredulity
and contempt, listened to these warnings of his youthful aide, and
politely intimated that a Major-General in the regular army of his
majesty the king of Great Britain was not to be taught the art of war
by a young American provincial, who had never seen even the inside of a
military school.
When the army commenced its march from Fort Cumberland, Washington
was quite dazzled by the brilliance of the scene. He declares it to
have been the most beautiful and inspiriting spectacle he had ever
beheld. The British troops were dressed in full and gaudy uniform. They
were arranged in columns, and marched with precision of drill such as
Washington had never seen before. The beams of the unclouded sun were
reflected from silken banners and burnished arms, while well-trained
musical bands caused the forests to resound with their martial strains.
The officers were mounted on prancing steeds, in the highest condition.
The river flowed tranquilly by, an emblem, not of horrid war, but of
peaceful, opulent, and happy homes. All were inspirited with hope and
confidence.
Such was the commencement of the campaign. How different the scene
presented, when, at the close of a few weeks, the fragments of this
army returned, bleeding, exhausted, starving--a struggling band of
fugitives, one half of their number having been killed and scalped by
the Indians.
Washington soon became convinced of the incapacity of General Braddock
to conduct such an enterprise as that upon which he had entered. He
writes:[37]
“I found that, instead of pushing on with vigor, without regarding a
little rough road, they were halting to level every mole-hill, and to
erect bridges over every brook, by which means we were four days in
getting twelve miles.”[38]
On one occasion Washington said, “If our march is to be regulated by
the slow movements of the train, it will be very tedious.” Braddock
smiled contemptuously at this indication of the ignorance of the young
American officer in reference to the march of armies.
Without encountering any opposition, the army surmounted the rugged
acclivities, and threaded the long defiles of the mountains, until,
from the dreary expanse, they entered upon the luxuriant, blooming,
magnificent valley of apparently boundless reach beyond. This
successful passage of the mountains inspired Major-General Braddock
with renewed self-confidence. His deportment said, every hour, to
his youthful American aid, “You see that a British officer cannot be
instructed in the art of war by a young Virginian.”
The lips of Washington were sealed. Not another word could he utter.
But he knew full well that an hour of awful disaster was approaching,
and one which he could do nothing whatever to avert. On the 9th of July
the sun rose over the Alleghanies, which were left far away in the
east, in cloudless splendor. The army, in joyous march, was approaching
the banks of the Monongahela.
It was one of those lovely days in which all nature seems happy. The
flowers were in their richest bloom. The birds were swelling their
throats with their sweetest songs. Balmy airs scarcely rippled the
surface of the rivulet, along whose banks the troops were marching. All
the sights and sounds of nature seemed to indicate that God intended
this for a happy world; where he wished to see his children dwelling
lovingly together, in the interchange of all deeds of fraternal
kindness. It was such a day as Herbert has beautifully pictured in the
words:
“Sweet day, so still, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky.”
The troops were defiling through a ravine which presented a natural
path for their march. On either side the eminences were covered
with the majestic forest and dense and almost impenetrable thickets
of underbrush. The narrow passage was very circuitous. It was just
the spot which any one familiar with Indian warfare would carefully
explore, before allowing a long line of troops to become entangled in
its labyrinthine trail. But there was no pause in the march; no scouts
were sent along the eminences to search for an ambush; no precautions
whatever were adopted to guard against surprise.
The troops were now within a few miles of Fort Duquesne. The march had
been triumphantly accomplished. Braddock was sanguine in the assurance
that before the sun should set his banners would float, in triumph,
over the fortress, and his army would be sheltered within its walls. He
was exulting. Washington was appalled in view of the danger which still
menaced them. Proudly Braddock hurried along, with his straggling band.
Jokes and laughter resounded, as the burnished muskets and polished
cannon of the British regulars brilliantly reflected the sunbeams.
The hour of doom had come. Suddenly there was a thunder-burst of
musketry, as from the cloudless skies. A storm of bullets, piercing the
flesh, shattering the bones, swept the astounded ranks. It was like a
supernatural attack from invisible spirits. Not a musket was revealed.
Not an individual was to be seen. But from hundreds of stentorian
throats the hideous war-whoop burst, leading those, who had never heard
those shrill yells before, to apprehend that they were assailed, not by
mortal foes, but by incarnate fiends.
The Indians were unerring marksmen. They were allies of the French, and
their savage ferocity was guided by European science. Crash followed
crash in rapid succession. The ground was instantly covered with the
dead and the dying. The horses, goaded by bullets and terrified to
frenzy, reared and plunged, and tore along the line, dragging fragments
of wagons after them, and trampling the living and the dead into the
mire. The ranks were thrown into utter consternation. There was no
defence that could be made. And still the deadly storm of bullets fell
upon them, while a feeble return fire was attempted, which merely threw
its bullets against the rocks, or buried them in the gigantic trees.
The Indians were derisively laughing at the convulsive and impotent
struggles of their victims.
Washington, who had been appalled as he anticipated this terrific
scene, now that the awful hour had come, was perfectly calm and
self-possessed. He had previously made the arrangement with some of
the provincial officers, precisely what to do in the emergence. The
Virginia troops were somewhat scattered. Washington was on horseback.
Almost instantly his horse was shot beneath him. He sprang upon
another, from which the rider had fallen; but scarcely was he seated
in the saddle, ere that horse dropped to the ground, pierced by the
bullet. Four bullets passed through his clothing. All this occurred in
almost less time than it has taken to describe it.
The scene was one to appall the stoutest nerves. The yells of the
savages, the clamor of the panic-stricken soldiers, the frantic
plungings of the wounded steeds, the utter and helpless confusion, the
unceasing rattle of musketry, the storm of leaden hail, the incessant
dropping of the dead, and the moans of the wounded, all united in
presenting a spectacle which could scarcely be rivalled in the realms
of despair. How different this awful scene of battle from the picture
of loveliness, peace, and happiness, which the valley exhibited,
reposing in its Maker’s smiles, as that morning’s sun flooded it with
its beams.
Braddock was a Briton, and, almost of course a man of physical
courage. Even pride was sufficiently strong to prevent any display
of cowardice. With bull-dog daring, he stood his ground, and issued
his orders, endeavoring in vain to marshal his troops in battle array.
At length a bullet struck him, and he fell mortally wounded. An awful
scene of confusion and horror was presented. There were six hundred
invisible foes in ambush. They were armed with the best of French
muskets, and were supported by a small band of highly disciplined
French troops.
Washington rallied all the Americans within his reach, and each man,
posting himself behind a tree, fired not a bullet without taking
deliberate aim. The English huddled together, and senselessly, in
their frenzy, firing at random, presented a fair target to the Indian
marksmen, and fell as fast as the savages could load and fire. As the
Indians rushed from their covert, with tomahawk and scalping-knife to
seize their bloody trophy of scalps, from the dead and the wounded, who
were struggling upon the ground, the Americans, with their rapid and
deadly fire checked them, and drove them back. But for this the army
would have been utterly destroyed. The English regulars were helpless.
“They ran,” wrote Washington, “like sheep before the hounds.”
The rout was complete. Braddock, bleeding, exhausted, and experiencing
the intensest mental anguish, begged to be left upon the field to die.
Everything was abandoned. The wagoners and artillery-men, cutting the
traces, mounted the horses and fled. Fortunately, the savages were too
much engaged in plunder to pursue. The carnage had been awful. Out of
eighty-six officers, twenty-six were killed and thirty-six wounded.
Over seven hundred of the rank and file fell. The tomahawk of the
savage soon numbered the wounded with the slain.
Braddock was hurried from the field in a litter, and his wounds dressed
about a mile from the scene of carnage. He could not mount a horse, and
had to be carried. A woe-stricken band of eighty soldiers formed his
escort. For four days he lingered in great pain, and then died. Once he
was heard to exclaim: “Who would have thought it.” It is also said that
he apologized to Washington for the manner in which he had rejected his
advice. His remains were buried in the road, and all indications of his
grave concealed, lest the Indians might discover the spot. In the gloom
of night the melancholy funeral ceremonies were performed. Washington
read the burial service. It is probable that not even a volley was
fired over his grave. Seldom has there been recorded a more sad close
of an ambitious life.
The army of Braddock was annihilated. The French, conscious that it
could do no further harm, left the starving, staggering, bleeding
remains to struggle back to Virginia. They returned to Fort Duquesne,
to rejoice over the victory, and to strengthen their works, in
preparation for another assault, should the attempt be renewed.
There was, at that time, an English officer, Colonel James Smith, a
captive at the fort. He has given a minute and exceedingly interesting
account of the scenes which had transpired, and which continued to be
enacted there. His narrative throws much light upon the character of
the conflict, and upon the woes with which man’s inhumanity can crush
his brother man.
He says that Indian scouts were every hour watching, from mountain
crags and forest thickets, the advance of the army. Every day swift
runners came to the fort with their report. The French commandant was
kept as intimately acquainted with the condition of the army, and
its position, as Braddock could have been himself. These warriors,
intelligent men, with established military principles, loudly derided
the folly of Braddock, declaring that he was nothing but a fool. As
they described his straggling and defenceless line, its utter exposure,
the course which they knew he must pursue, and the ambush they were
preparing for his destruction, they would burst into boisterous
laughter, saying, “We will shoot ’em all down, same as one pigeon.”
It is a great mistake to imagine that men must be simpletons because
they can neither read nor write. It is said that Charlemagne could not
even write his own name. And many of the most illustrious warriors of
ancient days had no acquaintance whatever with books. No one can read,
with an impartial spirit, the history of the Indian wars, without
admitting that there were in many cases, Indian chiefs who entirely
outgeneralled their English antagonists. The scene of events at the
fort is very vividly presented by Colonel Smith.
Early in the morning of the day in which the attack was to be made,
there was great and joyous commotion in and around the fort. The
Indians, some six or seven hundred in number, were greatly elated. They
seemed to be as sure of victory then as they were after it had been
attained.
There was hurrying to and fro, examining the muskets, filling the
powder-horns from open kegs of powder, storing away bullets in their
leathern pouches, and hurrying off in small bands, in single file,
through the trails of the forest. About an equal number of French
troops accompanied the Indians.
Soon all were gone, save the small garrison left in charge. Slowly
and silently the hours of the long summer day passed, when late in the
afternoon the triumphant shouts of fleet-footed runners were heard in
the forest, announcing the tidings of the great victory--tidings which
awoke the garrison to enthusiasm, but which filled the heart of Colonel
Smith with _dismay_. They brought the intelligence that the English
were huddled together and surrounded, in utter dismay and confusion, in
a narrow ravine, from which escape was almost impossible. The Indians,
from their concealments, were shooting them down as fast as they could
load and fire. They said that before sundown all would be killed.
The whoops or yells of the savages had various significations. There
was the war-whoop, with which their fierce natures were roused to
the attack. There was the cry of retreat, at whose signal all seemed
instantaneously to vanish. And there was the exultant, triumphant
“scalp-halloo,” with which they made the forests resound, when they
returned to the camp, dangling the gory trophies of victory.[39]
Soon a band of about a hundred savages appeared, yelling like so many
demons in their frantic, boisterous joy. It was the greatest victory
they had ever known or conceived of. Braddock’s army was laden not
only with all conveniences but with all luxuries. The Indians were
astounded, bewildered, at the amount and richness of the plunder they
had gained. It was more than they could carry away, and it presented
to them a spectacle of wealth and splendor such as the fabled lamp
of Aladdin never revealed. The savages returned stooping beneath the
load of grenadiers’ caps, canteens, muskets, swords, bayonets, and
rich uniforms which they had stripped from the dead. All had dripping
scalps, and several had money. Colonel Smith writes:
“Those that were coming in and those that had arrived, kept a constant
firing of small-arms, and also of the great guns in the fort, which was
accompanied by the most hideous shouts and yells from all quarters;
so that it appeared to me as if the infernal regions had broke loose.
About sundown I beheld a small party coming in with about a dozen
prisoners, stripped naked, with their hands tied behind their backs.
Their faces, and parts of their bodies were blackened. These prisoners
they burned to death on the banks of the Alleghany river, opposite to
the fort. I stood on the fort walls until I beheld them begin to burn
one of these men. They tied him to a stake and kept touching him with
fire-brands, red-hot irons, etc., and he screaming in the most doleful
manner. The Indians, in the meantime, were yelling like infernal
spirits. As this scene was too shocking for me to behold, I returned to
my lodgings, both sorry and sore.[40]
“From the best information I could receive, there were only seven
Indians and four French killed in this battle. Five hundred British
lay dead in the field, besides what were killed in the river, after
their retreat. The morning after the battle, I saw Braddock’s artillery
brought into fort. The same day also I saw several Indians in the dress
of British officers, with the sashes, half moons, laced hats, etc.,
which the British wore.”
On the 17th of July, Washington, at the head of his sad cavalcade,
reached Fort Cumberland. Fugitives had already brought reports of the
disaster. Washington, knowing the terrible anxiety of his family wrote
as follows to his mother.
“The Virginia troops showed a good deal of bravery, and were nearly all
killed. The dastardly behavior of those they called Regulars, exposed
all others, that were ordered to do their duty, to almost certain
death. At last, in despite of all the efforts of the officers to the
contrary, they ran, as sheep pursued by dogs, and it was impossible to
rally them.”
The American troops, who, in silent exasperation, had allowed
themselves to be led, by the folly of Braddock, into the valley of
death, had, in some way, become acquainted with the warnings and
remonstrances of Washington. This foresight, combined with the perfect
courage he had displayed on the battle-field, gave them the highest
opinion of his military abilities. They proclaimed his fame far
and wide. Thus the ignominious defeat of the British Major-General
rebounded to the honor of his American aide.
After the lapse of eighty years a gold seal of Washington, containing
his initials, was found upon the battle-field. A bullet had struck it
from his person. The precious relic is in possession of one of the
family.
This total defeat of the English, established, for a time, the entire
ascendency of the French in the valley of the Ohio and on the great
lakes. Washington reached Mount Vernon on the 26th of July, in a very
feeble condition of bodily health. He was probably well satisfied that
there is but little pleasant music to be found in the whistling of
hostile bullets. To his brother Augustine he wrote, in reference to his
frontier experience:
“I was employed to go a journey in the winter, when I believe few or
none would have undertaken it. What did I get by it? My expenses borne.
I was then appointed, with trifling pay, to conduct a handful of men
to the Ohio. What did I get for that? Why, after putting myself to a
considerable expense in equipping and providing necessaries for the
campaign, I went out, was soundly beaten and lost all! Came in, and had
my commission taken from me; or, in other words, my command reduced,
under pretence of an order from home [England]. I then went out a
volunteer with General Braddock; and lost all my horses and many other
things. But this, being a voluntary act, I ought not to have mentioned
it; nor should I have done it, were it not to show that I have been on
the losing order, ever since I entered the service, which is now nearly
two years.”
The French and the English now alike infamously engaged in enlisting
the Indians to aid them in the conflict. These benighted savages seem
to have had no more idea of mercy than had the wolves. They burned the
lonely cabins, tomahawked and scalped women and children, carried
mothers and maidens into the most awful captivity, and often put their
helpless victims to the torture. And yet the nobility of France and the
lords of England looked complacently on, while they goaded the savages
to their infernal deeds.
The English settlers outnumbered the French more than ten to one. But
the French, in actual possession of the lakes and the valley, could
rally around their banners a vastly more powerful force of savages than
the English could summon. Thus the English were much more exposed than
the French. The savages having lapped blood, and generally hating the
English, entered eagerly upon the work of conflagration, plunder, and
slaughter.
There were American hamlets of log huts, and lonely American
farm-houses, scattered through the wilderness for a distance of four
hundred miles along the western frontier of Virginia. But the court and
cabinet of Great Britain considered their weal or woe a matter of but
little consequence compared with the national glory to be obtained in
driving the French from this whole continent.[41]
Fifteen hundred plumed, painted, howling savages were soon the allies
of France, perpetrating deeds which one shudders to record. At midnight
these demons of the human race would burst from the forest, and rush
howling upon some hut where the poor defenceless emigrant, with his
wife and his children, was tremblingly sleeping. In an hour the
dreadful tragedy was completed. The yells of the savages drowned the
shrieks of the mother and her babe, as they fell beneath the tomahawk.
The cabin was in ashes. The savages had disappeared. The rising sun
revealed but the gory corpses in their shocking mutilation.
For the protection of the frontier, thus exposed to the greatest woes
of which the imagination can conceive, Virginia raised a force of seven
hundred men, which was placed under the experienced command of Colonel
Washington. For three years he was engaged in these arduous but almost
unavailing labors. No one could tell at what point the wary Indian
would strike a blow. Having struck it, the demoniac band vanished into
the glooms of the wilderness, where pursuit was impossible. There is
some excuse to be found for the fiend-like deeds of the savages, in the
ignorance, and in the principles of war which they and their ancestors
had ever cherished. But there is no excuse whatever to be found for
those French and English statesmen, who employed such agents for the
accomplishment of their ambitious projects. The scenes of woe, which
Washington often witnessed, were so dreadful that, in after life, he
could seldom bear to recur to them. We will give one instance, which he
has related, as illustrative of many others.
One day as, with a small detachment of troops, he was traversing a
portion of the frontier, he came to a solitary log cabin, in a little
clearing, which the axe of a settler had effected in the heart of
the forest. As they were approaching, through the woods, the report
of a gun arrested their attention. Cautiously they crept through the
underbrush, until they came in full sight of the cabin. Smoke was
curling up through the roof, while a large party of savages, with piles
of plunder by their side, were shouting and swinging their bleeding
scalps, as they danced round their booty. As soon as they caught sight
of the soldiers they fled into the forest with the swiftness of deer.
In the following words Washington describes the scene which was then
opened before them:
“On entering we saw a sight that, though we were familiar with blood
and massacre, struck us, at least myself, with feelings more mournful
than I had ever experienced before. On the bed, in one corner of the
room, lay the body of a young woman, swimming in blood, with a gash in
her forehead, which almost separated the head into two parts. On her
breast lay two little babes, apparently twins, less than a twelve-month
old, with their heads also cut open. Their innocent blood which once
flowed in the same veins, now mingled in one current again. I was
inured to scenes of bloodshed and misery, but this cut me to the soul.
Never in my after life, did I raise my hand against a savage, without
calling to mind the mother with her little twins, their heads cleft
asunder.”
The soldiers eagerly pursued the fugitive savages. They had gone but a
short distance from the house, when they found the father of the family
and his little boy, both dead and scalped in the field. The father
had been holding the plough, and his son driving the horse, when the
savages came upon them. From ambush they had shot down the father, and
the terrified little boy had run some distance toward the house, when
he was overtaken and cut down by the tomahawk. Thus the whole family
perished. Such were the perils of a home on the frontiers, in those sad
days. In allusion to these awful scenes Washington wrote:
“On leaving one spot, for the protection of another point of exposure,
the scene was often such as I shall never forget. The women and
children clung round our knees, beseeching us to stay and protect them,
and crying out to us, for God’s sake, not to leave them to be butchered
by the savages. A hundred times, I declare to heaven, I would have laid
down my life with pleasure, could I have insured the safety of those
suffering people by the sacrifice.”
During the years 1756 and 1757, the English met a constant series of
disasters. The French furnished their Indian allies with the best
muskets, and amply supplied them with ammunition. A small band of
French, under skilful officers, would take lead. They could call to
their aid any number almost they wished of Indian warriors. These
hardy men, cautious and sagacious, were highly disciplined in the kind
of warfare in which they were engaged. They were by no means to be
despised. In such enterprises they were far more valuable than European
troops could have been. If there be fiendish work to be done, fiends
are needed as the agents.
In February 1756, some matters of state called Washington to Boston.
He travelled the distance, five hundred miles, on horseback, and
in considerable state. He was accompanied by two aides. The three
officers had each black servants dressed in livery. All were well
mounted. In Philadelphia and New York Washington was received with
distinguished honors.
Almost every man must have his first love. It is very confidently
asserted that Washington, young, rich, handsome, and renowned, became
an ardent and open admirer of a beautiful and highly accomplished lady,
Miss Philipse.[42] It is even said that he sought her hand, and was
refused. This is not probable. He remained in Boston but ten days; the
press of business demanding a speedy return. The lady subsequently
married Captain Morris.[43]
Napoleon once said that he could easily imagine himself surrounded from
infancy by family influences, education and companionship, which should
have led him, instead of espousing the cause of the people, to have
been an ardent defender of the ancient régime. Mr. Everett writes:
“One cannot but bestow a passing thought on the question, What might
have been the effect on the march of events, if Washington, at the age
of twenty-five, and before the controversies between the mother country
and the colonies had commenced, had formed a matrimonial alliance with
a family of wealth and influence, in New York, which adhered to the
royal cause and left America, as loyalists, when the war broke out? It
is a somewhat curious fact, that Washington’s head-quarters, during a
part of the campaign of 1776, were established in the stately mansion
of the Morrises, on the Harlem river.”[44]