George Washington

by Stephen Brumwell

  After Washington rode back down to Winchester, Adam Stephen carried on his work with a will. Having caught two men in “the very act of desertion,” he reported, they “wealed them ’til they pissed themselves and the spectators shed tears for them.” Stephen hoped these bloody floggings would “answer the end of punishment,” by providing a grim example calculated to deter others from going astray.41 Through a series of regimental orders sent up from headquarters, Washington sought to instill the behavior expected of officers and gentlemen at second hand. These instructions, like the imposition of a regular-style regime of training and discipline, had a clear purpose. The ultimate object, as Washington emphasized in a proclamation printed in the Virginia Gazette on August 27, 1756, was to “show our willing obedience to the best of Kings” and through “unerring bravery” earn the royal favor and “a better establishment as a reward for our services”—in short, to be officially recognized as a “regular corps.”42

  Washington’s brave words were undermined by an advertisement, on the very same page of that issue of the Gazette, seeking the apprehension of seventeen men of the Virginia Regiment who had deserted from the post at Maidstone, just south of the Potomac River. Interestingly, none of them were Virginians. Save for a Scot and an Irishman, all had been born across the Potomac in Maryland and were in their late teens or early twenties. Reporting such “great and scandalous desertions” to Dinwiddie, Washington blamed them on the “fatiguing service, low pay, and great hardships in which our men have been engaged.”43

  Criticism of Washington and his regiment now intensified. Rumors and gossip escalated into an effective propaganda campaign that harnessed the growing power of the press to broadcast its allegations as widely as possible. In an article that dominated the front page of the Virginia Gazette of September 3, 1756, an anonymous correspondent writing as “the Virginia-Centinel” lambasted the officers of the colony’s regiment as a bunch of vice-ridden rakes who disparaged the noble efforts of the militia and skulked idle in their forts while the country around was ravaged by merciless raiders. It concluded by denying that the public could “receive much advantage from a regiment of such dastardly debauchees.”44

  Washington was not named in the article, but, as commander of the regiment, he was clearly deemed culpable for his subordinates’ shortcomings. His friends were quick to reassure him. John Kirkpatrick wrote that the “self-evident falsities asserted by that witty writer of the Centinel, must condemn him in the judgment of every rational, reflecting being.” Such an effort to “foment an ill spirit of slander, and propagate lies, to amuse the unthinking mob” did not reflect the views of the “whole thinking part of the legislative power.” They still backed Washington and were satisfied with his “conduct for the preservation of the country.” Like Kirkpatrick, another friend, William Ramsay, urged him to ignore the tirade: “Show your contempt of the scribbler by your silence,” he advised.45

  In fact, the broadside was about more than Washington and his touchy officers: harking back to the old antipathy toward standing armies, it voiced an ingrained distrust of paid professional soldiery and an admiration for a selfless amateur militia. Such opinions were only reinforced by Braddock’s defeat and more recent humiliations on other fronts.

  Indeed, while the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania sustained hit-and-run raids during the spring and summer of 1756, far heavier fighting had already flared elsewhere. At first, things had gone surprisingly well. During the previous September, the disaster in the Ohio Country had been partially offset by Anglo-American successes to the north. A mixed force of British regulars and Massachusetts provincials had fulfilled its role under the original plan for the 1755 campaign and captured Fort Beauséjour in Nova Scotia. In addition, a French lunge from Canada against the New York frontier had been parried and rebuffed during a rambling and bloody engagement at the foot of Lake George. Colonial forces commanded by the Irish-born superintendent of the northern Indians, William Johnson, had acquitted themselves well during the sprawling fight, fending off a formidable combination of French regulars, Canadian militia, and their Indian allies. Losses among the enemy’s officers had been heavy, with the slain including Captain Saint-Pierre, the aging veteran who had so impressed Washington with his soldierly bearing at Fort Le Boeuf in December 1753.46

  Despite these badly needed and much-trumpeted victories, by late summer of 1756, when the “Virginia-Centinel” unleashed his attack, the initiative had swung back in favor of the Franco-Canadians. Under the command of a determined new governor general, Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, and a competent field commander from France, Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, they had launched a lightning strike against the isolated post of Oswego on Lake Ontario, snapping up its demoralized garrison and cowing the remaining troops on the New York frontier.

  That same season saw the arrival of Braddock’s official replacement as Britain’s commander in chief in North America, John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun. The earl and the reinforcements of redcoats that arrived with him came too late to stave off disaster at Oswego, but he lost no time in seeking to orchestrate a renewed war effort in which the colonies would be obliged to place their burgeoning resources behind the Mother Country. This was an objective that was to cause Loudoun intense frustration, and to further sour relations between Crown and colonies.47

  For Washington, Loudoun’s arrival promised a fresh source of patronage, particularly as the earl had also received the honorary title of governor of Virginia. It revived hopes of the military advancement, and the regular officer’s commission, that Braddock would surely have provided had he lived. As a clear sign of his intentions, Washington’s new Winchester strongpoint, which was constructed despite the ongoing clamor that he should shift his base forward to Fort Cumberland, was named Fort Loudoun in compliment to the incoming commander in chief.

  During the autumn of 1756, Washington quit Winchester for long enough to make a fresh inspection of his extensive front line, which stretched from the Potomac down to the North Carolina border. This “very long and troublesome jaunt on the frontiers” gave him a taste of the hazards that his scattered detachments, based in isolated stockades and blockhouses, were daily facing in the field. Washington had ridden about 100 miles down the Shenandoah Valley to reach Augusta Court House when he received warning that Indians were roaming to the south. After pushing on to Vause’s Fort, on the Roanoke River, where it was rumored that militia could be assembled to oppose the raiders, Washington, accompanied by just his servant and a guide, apparently escaped death by the skin of his teeth. As the trio rode down a rain-swept, forest-fringed road, they were spotted by hostiles lying in ambush. These warriors let them pass unmolested, saving their bullets for two horsemen who appeared from the other direction less than two hours later. This deliverance from almost “certain destruction,” as Washington described it, must have seemed like another manifestation of the “Providence” or “Destiny” that had protected him at Fort Necessity and on the Monongahela. Expressing his conviction in the existence of some benevolent force controlling the fate of humans, Washington used both terms as readily as “God” or “Heaven.” Indeed, while conforming to the conscientious churchgoing expected of the gentry in Anglican Virginia, there is no compelling evidence that Washington was deeply religious.48

  Despite his close shave, after three weeks in the saddle Washington returned to Winchester without even having seen an enemy Indian. The report that the colonel sent to Williamsburg was nonetheless a bleak one: owing to “the bad regulation of the militia,” the “wretched and unhappy” inhabitants of the “whole back-country” were convinced of their approaching ruin and streaming off toward the Southern Colonies. They had petitioned Washington for men of his regiment to protect them, but such a redeployment would leave Winchester vulnerable. Another observation implied criticism of Dinwiddie himself: some eleven Catawbas from the south—Indian allies that Washington had been desperate to attract ever since he accepted his command�
��had come into Winchester. More could have been had, Washington complained, if only “the proper means [had] been used, to send trusty guides to invite and conduct them to us.”49

  In hectoring the man who had first given him his command and who shared many of his own goals and frustrations, Washington went too far: his “unmannerly” criticisms earned a personal rebuke from Dinwiddie, who was rapidly losing patience with his headstrong and apparently ungrateful protégé. It was time to bring him to heel. Rather than accept Washington’s recommendation that Fort Cumberland be evacuated and the frontier anchored upon the new Fort Loudoun, Dinwiddie and his council resolved that the contentious strongpoint on Wills Creek should not be abandoned, but rather reinforced. To that end, Washington was to march there immediately with most of the men he had assembled at Winchester.50

  When Washington pointed out that such a move would strip Winchester bare, he was ordered to recall the garrisons of his smaller, outlying posts to make up the shortfall. He grudgingly agreed to go to Fort Cumberland, but a letter to one of his captains, in which he regretted “the fate of the poor, unhappy inhabitants left by this means exposed to every incursion of a merciless enemy,” left no doubt of his feelings. Shortly before Christmas 1756, more than a year after assuming command of Virginia’s forces, Washington finally established his headquarters at Fort Cumberland.51

  Dinwiddie’s decision had been influenced by a comment from Lord Loudoun himself, who agreed that reinforcing the most “advanced” outpost was the best way of baffling the raids. Assuming that Washington had already “executed his plan” to retire to Winchester, Loudoun registered his grave concern at such a move: it would not only have a “bad effect as to the Dominion” but would “not have a good appearance at home,” he warned.52

  Washington was mortified that Loudoun should “have imbibed prejudices so unfavorable” to his character.53 In the New Year, he set about seeking to change Loudoun’s opinion by sending him an analysis of the Old Dominion’s war effort. In what he characterized as a “concise” letter, but which in fact rambled on at pamphlet length, he aimed to provide a “candid” account of Virginian affairs and more “particularly of the grievances which the Virginia Regiment has struggled against for almost three years.”54 As “a principal actor from the beginning of these disturbances,” Washington considered himself well qualified to do so. In the pages that followed, he resurrected familiar themes: the ineffectiveness of the disorderly and tardy militia; the money that had been squandered by failing to pursue “regular schemes or plans of operation”; the misplaced reliance on a “pusillanimous” defensive strategy that earned the “contempt and derision” of the Indians; the futility of such a policy given the lack of manpower to defend an extensive frontier; and the unassailable logic of an offensive campaign to destroy the root of the problem.

  In a passage that must have struck a chord with Loudoun, who had encountered determined resistance to his policies from elected assemblies across British America, Washington railed against Virginia’s failure to impose effective “military laws and regulations.” Instead, the Old Dominion had a mere “jumble of laws” that did nothing except render “command intricate and precarious,” making it difficult to exercise authority without riling the “civil powers,” who, “tenacious of liberty,” were instantly suspicious of “all proceedings that are not strictly lawful,” even when such innovations were justified by the circumstances.

  Yet for all the obstacles placed in its way, Washington maintained that the Virginia Regiment had proved stalwart in the colony’s defense. His beleaguered bluecoats had seen their fair share of action, fighting “more than twenty skirmishes” in which they had lost “near a hundred men killed and wounded.” The regiment had long been “tantalized” by hopes of becoming a regular unit of the British Army while, if Braddock had lived, Washington himself would surely have met with “preferment equal to my wishes.” He had long since reached the conclusion that it was impossible to continue in his present service “without loss of honor.” Only Loudoun’s appointment raised hopes that this dismal situation might change for the better. A passage that Washington wrote, but decided against including in his letter to Loudoun, reveals deeper personal bitterness. In this, he begged leave to add that his own “unwearied endeavors” were “inadequately rewarded.” His orders were ambiguous, leaving him “like a wanderer in a wilderness,” while he was held answerable for the consequences “without the privilege of defense!”55

  Washington’s most significant proposal was not presented directly to Loudoun but was saved for a covering letter addressed to his aide-de-camp, Captain James Cunningham. This suggested that Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland should together raise 3,000 well-regulated men. They would be enough to secure the key “passes” between Fort Cumberland and the Ohio and take possession of that waterway. Supplied with a “middling” train of artillery, the same force could then conquer “the terror of these colonies”—Fort Duquesne itself.56

  Hearing that Loudoun had summoned five lieutenant governors of the “Southern Colonies” to a meeting in Philadelphia to thrash out a plan of operations for 1757, Washington sought Dinwiddie’s permission to attend in person. As Dinwiddie would be on hand and whatever was decided would be passed on to Washington anyway, the governor could see no good reason for the trip but, as the colonel was so insistent, gave him leave to go. By late February 1757, Washington was in Philadelphia once again, whiling away several weeks in gambling, dancing, and shopping before Loudoun arrived. While there, he took the opportunity to write a “memorial” to Loudoun on behalf of the officers of the Virginia Regiment, formally requesting his patronage. This was couched in suitably deferential terms, but in a letter to Dinwiddie written some two weeks earlier, likewise seeking royal recognition for the regiment and its officers, Washington made no effort to conceal his mounting resentment at what seemed like a deliberate policy of discrimination against colonials.57

  Washington listed the attributes that entitled the Virginia Regiment to regular status: its long and arduous service, rigorous training, proper uniforms, and, above all, the fact that it was raised to serve “during the King’s or colony’s pleasure,” unlike other provincial units, which were seasonal formations, assembled “in the spring and dismissed in the Fall.” The truth of all this prompted Washington to voice deep-seated frustrations, expressed in biting and sarcastic language:

  We can’t conceive, that being Americans should deprive us of the benefits of British subjects; nor lessen our claim to preferment. . . . Some boast of long service as a claim to promotion—meaning I suppose, the length of time they have pocketed a commission—I apprehend it is the service done, not the service engaged in, that merits reward; and that there is, as equitable a right to expect something for three years hard and bloody service, as for 10 spent at St. James’s etc. where real service, or a field of battle never was seen.

  For good measure, Washington took a swipe at Dinwiddie himself, complaining that it was the “general opinion” that the Virginia Regiment’s services were “slighted” or had “not been properly represented to His Majesty.” In its criticism of what Washington believed to be the British Empire’s lopsided system of patronage, the letter has been convincingly identified as revealing a “significant development” in his “political identity and thinking,” marking “a step toward republicanism and nationalism.”58

  In his long letter to Loudoun, Washington had tactfully glossed over his own role in the great controversy of 1754—the “Jumonville affair.” By an extraordinarily unlucky coincidence, at the very moment that he was seeking to cement his credentials with the commander in chief, that embarrassing episode was suddenly resurrected. A French book, which included a translation of the rough journal of events that Washington had lost at Fort Necessity, had been captured aboard an enemy ship. In March 1757, the proprietor of the Pennsylvania Gazette advertised his intention to publish a translation within two months. That year, English-language editions emerged
in both Philadelphia and New York, so reminding readers of events that Washington would have preferred to forget.59

  Lord Loudoun finally reached Philadelphia on March 14. His strategic summit convened next day and lasted for a fortnight.60 By its end, all Washington’s hopes had been dashed. There would be no offensive against Fort Duquesne in 1757. In fact, as South Carolina was considered to be in greater danger than Virginia, some 400 of the Old Dominion’s troops would be diverted there instead. As part of the shake-up, however, Loudoun decreed that Fort Cumberland was henceforth to be garrisoned by Maryland, leaving Virginia responsible for manning five forts within its own territory: Washington’s headquarters would revert to Winchester after all. Nothing came of Washington’s plea that the Virginia Regiment be formally attached to the British Army. Neither was there any prospect of the king’s commission that he had sought for himself.

  Loudoun was an exceptionally busy man, mired in paperwork and hobbled by instructions from London; the difficulties he faced in securing supplies, manpower, and the cooperation of colonial officials with little enthusiasm for the war were Washington’s own problems writ large. Under the circumstances, Washington’s failure to achieve his personal goals at Philadelphia was unsurprising. But his approaches to Loudoun did not draw a total blank; his recommendations on behalf of fellow Virginians who were keen to serve as regular officers received serious consideration at headquarters. For example, it was through Colonel Washington’s interest and recommendation to Loudoun’s aide-de-camp, Captain Cunningham, that William Henry Fairfax, the son of his esteemed Belvoir neighbor, gained an ensign’s commission in the 28th Foot later that year.61 Washington’s conspicuous failure to secure a king’s commission for himself may have been a reflection of his unwillingness to accept a drop in rank from colonel—and the fact that he was too useful in his present post. In addition, unlike “Billy” Fairfax and other colonial officers who secured regular rank, Washington never offered to purchase a commission, instead expecting one as a just reward for his efforts.62