George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  9. A WORSE CATASTROPHE

  1. John Kennedy Lacock, “Braddock Road,” PMHB 38:1 (1914).

  2. Braddock brought four twelve-pound cannon, six six-pounders, four eight-inch howitzers, and fifteen Coehorn mortars. In Europe, it took fifteen horses to pull a twelve-pounder, seven horses for a six-pounder, and five horses for a howitzer. H.C.B. Rogers, The British Army of the Eighteenth Century, London: Allen & Unwin (1977), 80; Freeman 2:46–47.

  3. Alan Houston, “Benjamin Franklin and the ‘Wagon Affair’ of 1755,” WMQ 66:235, 236, 251 (2009); Braddock to Robert Napier, 8 June 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 84; “Captain Orme’s Journal,” 308; Leonard W. Labaree, “Benjamin Franklin and the Defense of Pennsylvania, 1754–1757,” Pennsylvania Hist. 29:7, 10–12 (1962); to William Fairfax, 5 May 1755, GWP. Both Franklin and Washington were in Frederick, Maryland, with General Braddock on April 22, 1755. Anderson, Crucible of War, 92; Franklin, Autobiography, 264; Larabee, “Benjamin Franklin and the Defense of Pennsylvania,” 10–12. Among the wagoners on the expedition were two men who would rise to their own prominence: Daniel Boone and the future General Daniel Morgan. Bailey, “Christopher Gist,” 46.

  4. To William Fairfax, 7 June 1755, GWP; Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg: Theo. Fenn & Co. (1851), 6:395–97 (report of Richard Peters to Pennsylvania Council).

  5. John St. Clair to Braddock, 9 February 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 61; William H. Shank, Indian Trails to Superhighways, York, PA: American Canal & Transportation Center (1988), 15; Paul A. W. Wallace, “‘Blunder Camp’: A Note on the Braddock Road,” PMHB 87:21 (January 1963).

  6. “Captain Orme’s Journal,” 321.

  7. Referring to a stretch of road in northern England, one authority warned that the odds were “a thousand to one [travelers] would break their neck or their limbs by overthrows or breakings down.” Arthur Young, A Six Months’ Tour Through the North of England, London: W. Strahan (1770), 580. Another Briton wrote in 1763 of English country roads that looked “more like a retreat of wild beasts and reptiles, than the footsteps of man.” Daniel Bourne, “A Treatise upon Wheel-Carriages,” London: 1763, in William Albert, The Turnpike Road System in England 1663–1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1972), 8; Lacock, “Braddock Road,” 38:27 (1914).

  8. Lacock, “Braddock Road,” 38:17–18 (1914); Nathan C. Rockwood, One Hundred Fifty Years of Roadbuilding in America, New York: Engineering News (1914); Connecticut Department of Transportation, “Early Travel in Connecticut Before 1895,” ConnDOT website. Most Virginians knew something about roadbuilding. Since 1632, every colonist had to work on local roads for a certain number of days every year. A later law required Virginians to keep nearby roads “well cleared from woods and bushes, and the roots well grubbed up, at least thirty feet broad.” Virginia Department of Transportation, A History of Roads in Virginia: “The Most Convenient Wayes,” Richmond (2006), 5–6; Albert Ogden Porter, County Government in Virginia: A Legislative History, 1607–1904, New York: Columbia University Press (1947), 60. In Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, Philadelphia: Prichard and Hall (1788), 161–62, he wrote, “The inhabitants of the county are by them [county courts] laid off into precincts, to each of which they allot a convenient portion of the public roads to be kept in repair.” If expert labor was required for bridges, “the county employs workmen to build it at the expense of the whole county.” Each county appointed a surveyor to supervise roadbuilding.

  9. “The Journal of Charlotte Brown, Matron of the General Hospital with the English Forces in America, 1754–1756,” in Isabel M. Calder, ed., Colonial Captivities, Marches, and Journeys, New York: The Macmillan Co. (1935), 178, 180–82 (2–13 June 1755).

  10. “Captain Orme’s Journal,” 334 (16 June 1755); Charles Hamilton, ed., Braddock’s Defeat: The Journal of Captain Robert Cholmley’s Batman, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press (1959), 25 (16 June 1755).

  11. Laycock, “Braddock’s Road,” 38:9, notes 16 and 27; Achenbach, The Grand Idea, 59–61; Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 124.

  12. “Captain Orme’s Journal,” 317–19.

  13. Ibid., 331–35; to John Augustine Washington, 2 July 1755, GWP.

  14. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 28; Robert Orme to Robert Napier, 18 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 98–100; to John Augustine Washington, 2 July 1755, GWP.

  15. “Captain Orme’s Journal,” 338, 341, 345, 349–50.

  16. From Roger Morris, 23 June 1755, GWP.

  17. To John Augustine Washington, 2 July 1755, GWP.

  18. Memorandum, 8–9 July 1755, GWP.

  19. Zagarri, Humphreys, 15.

  20. Ibid., 15; Orme to Napier, 18 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 98–100.

  21. Harry Gordon to unknown, 23 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 105–6; John St. Clair to Colonel Robert Napier, 22 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 102; anonymous letter, 25 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 115; Anderson, Crucible of War, 100; Baugh, The Global Seven Years’ War, 126.

  22. Adam Stephen to John Hunter, 18 July 1755, Egerton Ms., British Library, 3429, 277–80; “Journal of a British Officer,” in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 27.

  23. Lengel, General George Washington, 57; Ward, Adam Stephen, 19.

  24. Lengel, General George Washington, 55–57; Cassel, “The Braddock Expedition of 1755,” 13; Matthew C. Ward, “Fighting the ‘Old Women’: Indian Strategy on the Virginia and Pennsylvania Frontier, 1754–1758,” VMHB 103:297, 300 (July 1995).

  25. “An Account of the Battle of the Monongahela, 9th July 1755,” in John Romeyn Brodhead, Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, Albany: Weed, Parsons and Co. (1858), 10:303–4. The Indian attackers included members of the Ottawa, Potawatamie, Miami, Wyandotte, Shawnee, and Delaware tribes.

  26. Cassel, “The Braddock Expedition of 1755,” 11; “An Account of the Battle of the Monongahela,” in Brodhead, Colonial History of the State of New York, 10:304; “Leslie to a Merchant of Philadelphia, July 30, 1755,” in Hazard’s Pennsylvania Register, Philadelphia: Wm. F. Geddes, 5:191 (March 20, 1830); Zagarri, Humphreys, 15.

  27. Adam Stephen to John Hunter, 18 July 1755, British Library, supra.

  28. Harry Gordon to unknown, 23 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 106; “Journal of a British Officer,” in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 50.

  29. Orme to Napier, 18 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 99; Zagarri, Humphreys, 15; “Journal of British Officer,” in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 50.

  30. Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 49–50; “Copy of a document given by Captain Hewitt, R.N., to his friend Captain Henry Gage Morris, R.N., whose father was an aide de camp with Washington to Major General Braddock in the Expedition,” in Sargent, History of an Expedition, 386; Adam Stephen to John Hunter, 18 July 1755, British Library, supra.

  31. Adam Stephen to John Hunter, 18 July 1755, British Library, supra; Alan Houston, “Benjamin Franklin and the ‘Wagon Affair’ of 1755,” WMQ 66:235, 279 (2009) (quoting letter from John Hamilton, 16 July 1755, from camp at Widow Barringers); “Copy of a document given by Captain Hewitt, R.N.,” in Sargent, History of an Expedition, 386.

  32. Harry Gordon to unknown, 23 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 107; Cassell, “The Braddock Expedition of 1755,” 15; “The Journal of a British Officer,” in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 49; Zagarri, Humphreys, 15–16; to Mary Washington, 18 July 1755, GWP; “Anonymous Letter on Braddock’s Campaign,” 25 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 117; “Journal of British Officer,” in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 49 (July 9).

  33. Alexander Hamilton to Gavin Hamilton, August 1755, in Elaine G. Breslaw, “A Dismal Tragedy: Drs. Alexander and John Hamilton Comment on Braddock’s Defeat,” Maryland Hist. Mag. 75:118, 135–39 (1980).

  34. Adam Stephen to John Hunger
, July 18, 1755, British Library, supra; Lengel, General George Washington, 59; to Mary Washington, 18 July 1755, GWP; Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 29.

  35. Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 29–30.

  36. “Captain Orme’s Journal,” 356; Anderson, Crucible of War, 760, note 12.

  37. Anonymous letter, July 25, 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 115. “Copy of a document given by Captain Hewitt,” in Sargent, History of an Expedition, 386.

  38. “Journal of a British Officer,” in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 52; Robert Orme to Robert Napier, 18 July 1775, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 99; anonymous letter, 25 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 119; Harry Gordon account, 23 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 108; “Copy of a document given by Captain Hewitt,” in Sargent, The History of an Expedition, 356.

  39. Orme to Napier, 18 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 99.

  40. Zagarri, Humphreys, 16; Memorandum, 8–9 July 1755, and note 4, GWP.

  41. Zagarri, Humphreys, 16; Donald H. Kent, “The French Occupy the Ohio Country,” Pennsylvania Hist. 21:301, 314 (October 1954).

  42. To Mary Washington, 18 July 1755, GWP. It is noteworthy that Washington wrote his longest account of the battle to his mother, rather than to Colonel Fairfax or to the two brothers (Jack and Austin) with whom he corresponded more frequently. He may have been a courageous warrior, but he also was a twenty-three-year-old who—sick, exhausted, and morally devastated by a horrifying experience—wrote to his mother. He doubtless expected her to share his letter with his siblings.

  43. Pennsylvania Gazette, July 31, 1755; Boston Evening-Post, August 11, 1755; Boston Gazette, August 11, 1755; Hazard’s Pennsylvania Register, Philadelphia: Wm. F. Geddes (1831–32) 8:43–45 (reprinting articles from August 1755 Gentleman’s Magazine, and the August 26, 1755, issue of the Gazette in London).

  44. Anonymous letter, 25 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 115, 117; Adam Stephen to John Hunter, July 18, 1755, British Library, supra; Titus, The Old Dominion Goes to War, 69; Don Higginbotham, George Washington and the American Military Tradition, Athens: University of Georgia Press (1985), 18. In a letter from Mount Vernon at the end of July, Washington wrote to Braddock’s former chief aide that most accounts of the battle were “greatly to the disadvantage of the poor deceased general, who is censured on all hands.” To Orme, 28 July 1755, GWP.

  45. James Read to Ben Franklin, in Alan Houston, “Benjamin Franklin and the ‘Wagon Affair’ of 1755,” WMQ 66:235, 281 (2009); Zagarri, Humphreys, 19.

  46. Zagarri, Humphreys, 18–19; Adam Stephen to John Hunter, 18 July 1755, British Library, supra.

  47. Dinwiddie to William Allen, 2 January 1756, in Dinwiddie Records 2:313; to Robert Jackson, 2 August 1755, GWP.

  48. Dunbar to Robert Napier, 24 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 109–11; St. Clair to Napier, 22 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 102; Anderson, Crucible of War, 105.

  49. To Dinwiddie, 18 July 1755, GWP.

  50. Dinwiddie to Thomas Dunbar, 26 July 1755, in Dinwiddie Records 118–20; from Dinwiddie, 26 July 1755, GWP.

  51. Pennsylvania Gazette, July 31, 1755; Boston Evening-Post, August 11, 1755; Boston Gazette, August 11, 1755; from William Fairfax, 26 July 1755, GWP; from Philip Ludwell, 8 August 1755, GWP.

  52. To Augustine Washington, 2 August 1755, GWP; to the County Lieutenants, 2 August 1755, GWP; Memorandum, 2 August 1755, GWP; to Colin Campbell, 2 August 1755, GWP.

  53. Anderson, Crucible of War, 105.

  54. To Augustine Washington, 2 August 1755, GWP; anonymous letter, 25 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 119.

  55. To John Augustine Washington, 18 July 1755, GWP.

  56. Alexander Hamilton letter, in Breslaw, “A Dismal Tragedy,” 138–39.

  57. Samuel Davies, Religion and Patriotism the Constituents of a Good Soldier, Philadelphia (1755), 12 n*; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 30, 196; Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, 26 June 1775.

  58. Custis, Recollections, 303–5.

  10. THE NAKED FRONTIER

  1. Hinderaker, “Declaring Independence,” 117; Warren Hofstra, “‘A Parcel of Barbarian’s and an Uncooth Set of People’: Settlers and Settlements of the Shenandoah Valley,” in Warren Hofstra, ed., George Washington and the Virginia Backcountry, Madison: Madison House (1998), 92–94.

  2. David L. Preston, “‘Make Indians of our White Men’: British Soldiers and Indian Warriors from Braddock’s to Forbes’ Campaigns,” Pennsylvania Hist. 74:280, 287 (2007); Calloway, The Shawnees, 28; Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 151; Titus, The Old Dominion at War, 71; Brown, Virginia Baron, 136–37; from Adam Stephen, 4 October 1755, GWP; Pennsylvania Gazette, October 30, 1755; Dinwiddie to Sir Charles Hardy, 18 October 1755, in Dinwiddie Records 2:251.

  3. B. Scott Crawford, “A Frontier of Fear: Terrorism and Social Tension Along Virginia’s Western Waters, 1742–1775,” West Virginia Hist. 2:1 (Fall 2008); James Maury to John Fontaine, 9 August 1755, in Ann Maury, ed., Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons (1872), 383; Gwenda Morgan, “Virginia and the French and Indian War: A Case Study of the War’s Effects on Imperial Relations,” VMHB 81:23, 31 (1973); from Adam Stephen, 25 September 1755, GWP.

  4. Dinwiddie to Charles Carter, 18 July 1755, in Dinwiddie Records 2:102; Dinwiddie to Henry Fox, 24 May 1755, in Dinwiddie Records 2:414–15; Titus, The Old Dominion Goes to War, 75; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1752–1755, 8:302, 8:314 (8 and 23 August 1755); Virginia Gazette (Hunter), September 5, 1755.

  5. To Mary Washington, 14 August 1755, GWP.

  6. To Warner Lewis, 14 August 1755, GWP.

  7. Instructions from Robert Dinwiddie, 14 August 1755, GWP; Freeman 2:113.

  8. From Dinwiddie, 17 September 1755, GWP; Titus, Old Dominion Goes to War, 29; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1752–55, 8:222. The westerners, as Washington put it in a letter to Governor Dinwiddie, “choos[e] as they say to die with their wives and families.” To Dinwiddie, 11–14 October 1755, GWP.

  9. James Maury to John Fontaine, 15 June 1756, in Maury, Huguenot Memoirs, 404; to Adam Stephen, 28 December 1755, GWP; from Dinwiddie, 14 December 1755, GWP; to Dinwiddie, 13 January 1756, GWP.

  10. “General Instructions for Recruiting Officers for the Virginia Regiment,” 1–3 September 1755, GWP; Lloyd DeWitt Bockstruck, Virginia’s Colonial Soldiers, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co. (1988), 63–82.

  11. John Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?” VMHB 95:307, 309–10 (July 1786).

  12. To Andrew Lewis, 6 September 1755 (instructions), GWP; Memorandum, 6 September 1755, GWP; Higginbotham, American Military Tradition, 18–19; Orders, 15 September 1755, GWP; Lewis, For King and Country, 196–97.

  13. John Carlyle to George Carlyle, August 15, 1755, in Carlyle Correspondence; to Dinwiddie, 11 September 1755, GWP.

  14. From Adam Stephen, 4 October 1755, GWP; to John Robinson, 8 October 1755, GWP.

  15. To Peter Hog, 24 September 1755, GWP.

  16. To Dinwiddie, 20 August 1755, GWP; from John Martin, 30 August 1755, GWP; from Adam Stephen, 4 October 1755, GWP; to Dinwiddie, 8 October 1755, 11–14 October 1755, 5 December 1755, GWP; Dinwiddie to Sir Thomas Robinson, 15 November 1755, in Dinwiddie Records 2:267.

  17. To Stephen, 20 September 1755, GWP; from Stephen, 4 October 1755, GWP; Freeman 2:120; to Dinwiddie, 11–14 October 1755, GWP; Memorandum, 10 October 1755, GWP; Ward, “Fighting the ‘Old Women,’” 312 (quoting Preston); to Dinwiddie, 11–14 October 1755, GWP.

  18. Ward, “Fighting the ‘Old Women,’” 312; Journal of Captain Charles Lewis of the Virginia Regiment Commanded by Colonel George Washington in the Expedition Against the French, October 10–December 27, 1755, Richmond: Virginia Historical Society (1892), 205–7, 215; James Axtell, The European and the Indian: Essays in the
Ethnohistory of Colonial North America, New York: Oxford University Press (1981), 214; Ward, “‘This Land Is Ours and Not Yours,’” in Barr, The Boundaries Between Us, 32.

  19. Virginia Gazette (Hunter), October 10, 1755, 3; Memorandum and Advertisement, 13 October 1755, GWP.

  20. To Dinwiddie, 11–14 October 1755, GWP; George Mercer to Andrew Lewis, 18 October 1755, GWP.

  21. Virginia Gazette (Hunter), September 12 and 26, 1755, reprinted in “Extracts from the Virginia Gazette, 1752 and 1753 (Concluded),” VMHB 25:12, 16, 17 (1917); Virginia Gazette, (Hunter), October 10, 1755; Journal of Captain Charles Lewis, 215.

  22. To Richard Washington, 6 December 1755, GWP; Address, 8 January 1756, GWP.

  23. Dinwiddie to Earl of Halifax, 15 November 1755, Dinwiddie to Lords of Trade, 15 November 1755, in Dinwiddie Records 2:273, 2:275, 2:268, 2:269; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1752–55, 8:332 (8 November 1755).

  24. To John Augustine Washington, 28 May 1755, GWP.

  25. To John Augustine Washington, 7 June 1755, GWP; Fairfax County, Virginia, June 13, 1748 Election Poll, in George Washington Papers, Series 4, General Correspondence, GW/LOC Digital Collection.

  26. John G. Kolp, “The Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Pre-Revolutionary Virginia,” WMQ 49:652, 655 (1992).

  27. Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders, 14–24, 42, 49, 51.

  28. Freeman 2:146–47 and note 156; Conway, Barons of the Potomac and the Rappahannock, 269–70; from Adam Stephen, 23 December 1755, GWP. Washington’s course in the incident recalls the reported deathbed remark of his father that he was proud never to have struck another man. Both father and son may have disdained using their size and strength against smaller men. “General Washington,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 11:1, 5 (1857).