The traveller at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, is within striking distance of Braddock’s Road at its most interesting points. A six-mile climb to the summit of Laurel Hill brings one upon the old-time route which will be found near Washington’s Spring. A delightful drive along the summit of the mountain northward brings one near the notorious “Dunbar’s Camp” where so many relics of the campaign have been found and of which many may be seen in the museum of the nearby Pennsylvania Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home. Here Dunbar destroyed the quantities of stores and ammunition with which he could not advance, much less retreat. The visitor here should find “Jumonville’s Grove,” about a quarter of a mile up the valley, and should not miss the view from Dunbar’s Knob.
Less than one mile eastward of Chalk Hill, beside a brook which bears Braddock’s name, beneath a cluster of solemn pines, lies the dust of the sacrificed Braddock. If there is any question as to whether his body was interred at this spot, there is no question but that all the good he ever did is buried here. Deserted by those who should have helped him most, fed with promises that were never kept, defeated because he could not find the breath to cry “retreat” until a French bullet drove it to his throat—he is remembered by his private vices which the whole world would quickly have forgotten had he won his last fight. He was typical of his time—not worse.
In studying Braddock’s letters, preserved in the Public Records Office, London, it has been of interest to note that he never blamed an inferior—as he boasted in the anecdote previously related. His most bitter letter has been reproduced, and a study of it will make each line of more interest. His criticism of the Colonial troops was sharp, but his praise of them when they had been tried in fire was unbounded. He does not directly criticise St. Clair—though his successful rival for honors on the Ohio, Forbes, accused St. Clair in 1758 not only of ignorance but of actual treachery. “This Behavior in the people” is Braddock’s charge, and no one will say the accusation was unjust.
With something more than ordinary good judgment Braddock singled out good friends. What men in America, at the time, were more influential in their spheres than Franklin, Washington, and Morris? These were almost the only men he, finally, had any confidence in or respect for. Washington knew Braddock as well as any man, and who but Washington, in the happier days of 1784, searched for his grave by Braddock’s Run in vain, desirous of erecting a monument over it?
Mr. King, editor of the Pittsburg Commercial-Gazette, in 1872 took an interest in Braddock’s Grave, planted the pines over it and enclosed them. A slip from a willow tree that grew beside Napoleon’s grave at St. Helena was planted here but did not grow. There is little doubt that Braddock’s dust lies here. He was buried in the roadway near this brook, and at this point, early in the last century, workmen repairing the road discovered the remains of an officer. The remains were reinterred here on the high ground beside the Cumberland Road, on the opposite bank of Braddock’s Run. They were undoubtedly Braddock’s.
As you look westward along the roadway toward the grave, the significant gorge on the right will attract your attention. It is the old pathway of Braddock’s Road, the only monument or significant token in the world of the man from whom it was named. Buried once in it—near the cluster of gnarled apple-trees in the center of the open meadow beyond—he is now buried, and finally no doubt, beside it. But its hundreds of great gorges and vacant swampy isles in the forests will last long after any monument that can be raised to his memory.
Braddock’s Road broke the league the French had made with the Alleghenies; it showed that British grit could do as much in the interior of America as in India or Africa or Egypt; it was the first important material structure in this New West, so soon to be filled with the sons of those who had hewn it.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Entick, History of the Late War, vol. i., p. 110.