Braddock's Road and Three Relative Papers

by Archer Butler Hulbert

CHAPTER III

FROM ALEXANDRIA TO FORT CUMBERLAND

What it was that proved to be “extraordinary in the way of the Service” General Braddock soon discovered, and it is a fair question whether, despite all that has been written concerning his unfitness for his position, another man with one iota less “spirit” than Braddock could have done half that Braddock did.

The Colonies were still quite asleep to their danger; the year before, Governor Dinwiddie had been at his wits’ end to raise in Virginia a few score men for Fry and Washington, and had at last succeeded by dint of drafts and offers of bounty in western lands. Pennsylvania was hopelessly embroiled in the then unconstitutional question of equal taxation of proprietary estates. The New York assembly was, and not without reason, clannish in giving men and money for use only within her own borders. It is interesting to notice the early flashes of lurking revolutionary fire in the Colonies when the mother-country attempted to wield them to serve her own politic schemes. Braddock was perhaps one of the first Englishmen to suggest the taxation of America and, within a year, Walpole wrote concerning instructions sent to a New York Governor, that they “seemed better calculated for the latitude of Mexico and for a Spanish tribunal than for a free rich British Settlement, and in such opulence and of such haughtiness, that suspicion had long been conceived of their meditating to throw off their dependence on their mother country.”[11] It would have been well for the provinces if they had postponed for a moment their struggle against English methods, and planned as earnestly for the success of English arms as they did when defeat opened the floodgates of murder and pillage all along their wide frontiers. But it is not possible to more than mention here the struggles between the short-sighted assemblies and the short-sighted royal governors. The practical result, so far as Braddock was concerned, was the ignoring, for the greater part, of all the instructions sent from London. This meant that Braddock was abandoned to the fate of carrying out orders wretchedly planned under the most trying circumstances conceivable. Instead of having everything prepared for him, he found almost nothing prepared, and on what had been done he found he could place no dependence. Little wonder the doomed man has been remembered as a “brute” in America! To have shouldered the blame for the lethargy of the Colonies, for the jealousy of their governors, and for the wretchedness of the orders given Braddock, would have made any man brutish in word and action. Pennsylvanians have often accused Washington of speaking like a “brute” when, no doubt in anger, he exclaimed that the officials of that Province should have been flogged for their indifference; they were, God knows,—but by the Indians after Braddock’s defeat.

The desperateness of Braddock’s situation became very plain by the middle of April, when the Governors of the Colonies met at his request at the camp at Alexandria to determine upon the season’s campaigns. But it was not until later that he knew the full depths of his unfortunate situation. As early as March 18 Braddock wrote Sir Thomas Robinson a most discouraging letter, but on April 19, after the Governors’ Council, another letter to Robinson shows the exact situation. As to the fund which the Colonies had been ordered to raise, the Governors “gave it as their unanimous opinion that such a Fund can never be establish’d in the Colonies without the Aid of Parliament.”[12] They were therefore “unanimously of the Opinion that the Kings Service in the Colonies, and the carrying on of the present Expedition must be at a stand, unless the General shall think proper to make use of his Credit upon the Government at home to defray the Expense of all the Operations under his Direction.”[12] In Braddock’s letter of April 19 he affirms “The £20,000 voted in Virginia has been expended tho not yet collected; Pennsylvania and Maryland still refuse to contribute anything; New York has raised £5,000 Currency for the use of the Troops whilst in that province, which I have directed to be applied for the particular Service of the Garrison at Oswego.... I shall march from this place for Frederick tomorrow Morning in my Way to Will’s Creek, where I should have been before this time, had I not been prevented by waiting for the artillery, from which I still fear further delays, I hope to be upon the mountains early in May and some time in June to have it in my power to dispatch an Express with some Account of the Event of our operations upon the Ohio.”[13] The disappointed man was not very sanguine of success, but adds, “I hope, Sir, there is good prospect of success in every part of the plan I have laid before you, but it is certain every single attempt is more likely to succeed from the Extensiveness of it.”[13] By this he meant that the French, attacked at several points at once, would not be able to send reinforcements from one point to another.

But more serious disappointments awaited Braddock—a great part of the definite promises made by Governor Dinwiddie were never to be realized. The governor and Sir John St. Clair had promised Braddock that twenty-five hundred horses and two hundred wagons would be in readiness at Fort Cumberland to transport the army stores across the mountains, and that a large quantity of beeves and other provisions would be awaiting the army through July and August. Braddock was also promised the support of a large force of Indians and, conformably to his orders, had been careful to send the usual presents to the tribes in question. He soon learned, however, that the short-sighted Assemblies of both Virginia and Pennsylvania had already alienated the Indians whom they should have attached to their cause, and but a handful were faithful now when the crisis had come; for the faithfulness of these few Braddock was perhaps largely in debt to Washington, whom they followed during the campaign of the preceding year. As to the details of his miserable situation, nothing is of more interest than the frank letter written by Braddock to Sir John Robinson from Fort Cumberland, June 5:

“I had the Honor of writing to you from Frederick the latter end of April.

“On the 10th of May I arrived at this place, and on the 17th the train join’d me from Alexandria after a March of twenty seven days, having met with many more Delays and Difficulties than I had even apprehended, from the Badness of the Roads, Scarcity of Forage, and a general Want of Spirit in the people to forward the Expedition.

“I have at last collected the whole Force with which I propose to march to the Attack of Fort Duquesne, amounting to about two thousand effective Men, eleven hundred of which Number are Americans of the southern provinces, whose slothful and languid Disposition renders them very unfit for Military Service. I have employ’d the properest officers to form and discipline them and great pains has and shall be taken to make them as useful as possible.

“When I first came to this place I design’d to have refresh’d the Troops by a few days Rest, but the Disappointments I have met with in procuring the Number of Wagons and Horses necessary for my March over the Mountains have detained me near a Month.