These instructions and the letter from the Duke of Cumberland make two things very clear: it is clear from the King’s instructions (item 12) that the campaign to the Ohio Valley from Virginia was to be the important coup of the summer; the documents mentioned were to acquaint Braddock “with what has hitherto happened of a hostile Nature upon the Banks of that River.” This is made more certain by one of the first sentences in the Duke of Cumberland’s letter, “that immediately after your landing, you consider what artillery and other implements of war it will be necessary to transport to Will’s Creek for your first operation on the Ohio.” It is also clear that Braddock was helplessly dependent upon the success with which the American governors carried out the royal orders previously sent to them. They had been ordered to raise money and troops, provide provisions, open the necessary roads, supply carriages and horses, and conciliate and arm the Indian nations on the frontier. How far they were successful it will be proper to study later; for the moment, let us consider the destination of the little army that set sail, after innumerable delays, from the Downs December 21, 1754, led by the famed “Centurian” whose figure-head adorns Greenwich Hospital today.
Sending Braddock and his army to Virginia against the French on the Ohio was a natural blunder of immeasurable proportions. It was natural, because all eyes had been turned to Virginia by the activity of the Ohio Company, Washington’s campaign of the preceding year, and the erection of Fort Cumberland on the farthest frontier. These operations gave a seeming importance to the Virginia route westward which was all out of harmony with its length and the facilities offered. “Before we parted,” a friend of Braddock wrote concerning the General’s last night in London, “the General told me that he should never see me more; for he was going with a handful of men to conquer whole nations; and to do this they must cut their way through unknown woods. He produced a map of the country, saying, at the same time, ‘Dear Pop, we are sent like sacrifices to the altar.’” This gloomy prophecy was fulfilled with a fatal accuracy for which the choice of the Virginia route was largely responsible. Braddock’s campaign had been fully considered in all its bearings in the royal councils, and the campaign through Virginia to Fort Duquesne seems to have been definitely decided upon. Even before Braddock had crossed half of the Atlantic his Quartermaster-General, St. Clair, had passed all the way through Virginia and Maryland to Fort Cumberland in carrying out orders issued to him before Braddock had reached England from Gibraltar. “Having procured from the Governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia and from other sources,” writes Mr. Sargent, “all the maps and information that were obtainable respecting the country through which the expedition was to pass, he [St. Clair] proceeded in company with Governor Sharpe of Maryland upon a tour of inspection to Will’s Creek.” He inspected the Great Falls of the Potomac and laid plans for their being made passable for boats in which the army stores were to be shipped to Fort Cumberland, and had made contracts for the construction of the boats. He laid out a camp at Watkin’s Ferry. It is doubtful whether Braddock had ever had one word to say in connection with all these plans which irrevocably doomed him to the almost impossible feat of making Fort Cumberland a successful base of supplies and center of operations against the French. Moreover the Virginia route, being not only one of the longest on which Braddock could have approached the French, was the least supplied with any manner of wagons. “For such is the attention,” wrote Entick, “of the Virginians towards their staple trade of tobacco, that they scarce raise as much corn, as is necessary for their own subsistence; and their country being well provided with water-carriage in great rivers an army which requires a large supply of wheel-carriages and beasts of burden, could not expect to be furnished with them in a place where they are not in general use.”[5] “Their Produce is Tobacco,” wrote one of Braddock’s army, of the Virginians, “they are so attached to that, and their Avarice to raise it, makes them neglect every Comfort of Life.” As has often been said, Carlisle in Pennsylvania would have made a far better center of operations than Fort Cumberland, and eventually it proved to be Pennsylvania wagons in which the stores of the army were transported—without which the army could not have moved westward from Fort Cumberland one single mile. “Mr. Braddock had neither provisions nor carriage for a march of so considerable a length, which was greatly increased and embarrassed by his orders to take the rout of Will’s Creek; which road, as it was the worst provided with provisions, more troublesome and hazardous, and much more about, than by way of Pennsylvania.”[6]
Not to use superlatives, it would seem that the American colonial governors and St. Clair might have presented to Braddock the difficulties of the Virginia route as compared with the Pennsylvania route early enough to have induced the latter to make Carlisle his base for the Ohio campaign; but there is no telling now where the blunder was first made; a writer in Gentleman’s Magazine affirmed that the expedition was “sent to Virginia instead of Pennsylvania, to their insuperable disadvantage, merely to answer the lucerative views of a friend of the ministry, to whose share the remittances would then fall at the rate of 2½ per cent profit.”[7]
Even the suspicion of such treachery as sending Braddock to Virginia to indulge the purse of a favorite is the more revolting because of the suggestion in the letter from the Duke of Cumberland that Braddock, personally, favored an attack on Fort Niagara—which, it has been universally agreed, was the thing he should have done. “As to your design of making yourself master of Niagara”—the italics are mine—wrote Cumberland; and, though he refers at the beginning to their numerous interviews, this is the sole mention throughout the letter of any opinion or plan of Braddock’s. “Had General Braddock made it his first business to secure the command of lake Ontario, which he might easily have done soon enough to have stopt the force that was sent from Canada to Du Quesne, that fort must have been surrendered to him upon demand; and had he gone this way to it, greater part of that vast sum might have been saved to the nation, which was expended in making a waggon road, through the woods and mountains, the way he went.”[8] Yet Cumberland’s orders were distinct to go to Niagara by way of Virginia and Fort Duquesne.
Horace Walpole’s characterization of Braddock is particularly graphic and undoubtedly just—“desperate in his fortune, brutal in his behavior, obstinate in his sentiments, intrepid and capable.”[9] The troops given him for the American expedition were well suited to bring out every defect in his character; these were the fragments of the 44th and 48th regiments, then stationed in Ireland. Being deficient (even in time of peace), both had to be recruited up to five hundred men each. The campaign was unpopular and the recruits secured were of the worst type—“who, had they not been in the army, would probably have been in Bridewell [prison].” Walpole wrote, “the troops allotted to him most ill-chosen, being draughts of the most worthless in some Irish regiments, and anew disgusted by this species of banishment.”[10] “The mutinous Spirit of the Men encreases,” wrote an officer of Braddock’s army during the march to Fort Duquesne, “but we will get the better of that, we will see which will be tired first, they of deserving Punishments, or we of inflicting them ... they are mutinous, and this came from a higher Spring than the Hardships here, for they were tainted in Ireland by the factious Cry against the L— L— Ld G—, and the Primate; the wicked Spirit instilled there by Pamphlets and Conversation, got amongst the common Soldiers, who, tho’ they are Englishmen, yet are not the less stubborn and mutinous for that.”
Thus the half-mutinous army, and its “brutal,” “obstinate,” “intrepid,” and “capable” commander fared on across the sea to Virginia during the first three months of the memorable year of 1755. By the middle of March the entire fleet had weighed anchor in the port of Alexandria, Virginia.
The situation could not be described better than Entick has done in the following words: “Put all these together, what was extraordinary in his [Braddock’s] conduct, and what was extraordinary in the way of the Service, there could be formed no good idea of the issue of such an untoward expedition.”