I cannot see that he had the opportunity to learn much more in Braddock’s campaign in 1755. He was that general’s aide, a carrier of messages and orders, and a member of the military family. He had ever before his eyes a thousand examples of carelessness, chicanery, and mismanagement, but those could not teach him how an army was to be cared for properly. His advice was often asked and minded, but he gave it in the capacity of a frontiersman, not as a tactician or officer. The one exception was when he urged that Braddock divide the army into two parties by sending a small flying column rapidly against Fort Duquesne.
It is clear from preceding pages that, on the Virginia frontier, he learned no lessons on the control of large bodies of men.
But now, in 1758, as colonel of an important branch of the army General Forbes was throwing across the Alleghenies, Washington came forward conspicuously as a champion of a certain route to be pursued by an army of five thousand men. Frankly, what did he know of the needs of five thousand men on a march of two hundred miles from their base of supplies? His correspondence on this point is not satisfactory. He had never passed over the Pennsylvania Road, and, though he understood better than anyone what it meant to cut a new road, he does not answer the argument that the Braddock Road failed to offer as much pasturage for horses and cattle as the Pennsylvania route. He confines himself largely to the matter of celerity: and the situation, as we have explained, did not demand haste. Forbes had the best of reasons for moving slowly. From a commissary’s standpoint Washington’s argument could have had no weight whatever.
Washington was strongly prejudiced in favor of the Virginia route; and no man could have had better reasons for prejudice, as will be shown. He argued conspicuously and vehemently on a subject with which he had no experience. Great and good as he became, and brave and faithful as he was, it is all the easier to confess to a weakness which was due to a lack of experience and to loyal, old-time Virginia pride. It is an exceedingly pleasant duty to emphasize the fact that, after his repeated arguments were cast aside by his superiors and a route was chosen in the face of the strongest opposition he could bring to bear on the subject, the young man swallowed his chagrin and the slights under which his fine spirit must have writhed, and worked manfully and heroically for measures which he had heartily opposed. In all that he had done in the past five years he never played the man better than here and now.
It is very difficult to unravel what General Forbes continually calls the plot of certain Virginians to force him into Braddock’s Road. The matter is of additional interest because, in his letter to Bouquet of August 9, Forbes utters a very sharp criticism of Washington: “By a very unguarded letter of Col. Washington’s that accidentally fell into my hands, I am now at the bottom of their scheme against this new road, a scheme that I think was a shame for any officer to be concerned in, but more of this at [our] meeting.” Again on September 4 he wrote: “Therefore [I] would consult C. Washington, altho perhaps not follow his advice, as his Behaviour about the roads, was in no ways like a soldier.” What letter this was of Washington’s I do not know. It could not have been the letter written to Halket (page 113); it hardly seems possible that it could have been the following letter which Washington wrote to Governor Fouquier: “The Pennsylvanians, whose present as well as future interest it was to have the expedition conducted through their government, and along that way, because it secures their frontiers at present, and their trade hereafter, a chain of forts being erected, had prejudiced the General absolutely against the old road, and made him believe that we were the partial people, and determined him at all events to pursue that route.”[71] The doubt is not whether Forbes would have spoken sharply if he had seen this letter, but whether it could have fallen into his hands. It was undoubtedly sent from Fort Cumberland straight to Winchester and Williamsburg. From one point the letter does Washington no credit, though it shows plainly that there was a bitter factional fight and that he felt strongly the righteousness of the Virginian side of the question, for which he is not to be blamed. As to his accusation against his general, it seems to me unreasonably bitter. Forbes’s correspondence with Bouquet is convincing proof of the falseness of Washington’s theory that the Pennsylvanians “had prejudiced the General absolutely against the old road ... and determined him at all events to pursue that (new) route.” After wrestling with the route question two months Forbes wrote General Abercrombie as late as July 25 that he was unwilling to bring the divisions of his army together “till the Route is finally determined.” Forbes had no predilection for Pennsylvanians; when, in September, a spirit of jealousy appeared concerning the province from which the army provisions should be obtained, Forbes wrote Bouquet (September 17): “I believe neither you nor I values one farthing where we get provisions from, provided we are supplyed, or Interest ourselves either with Virginia or Pennsylvania, which last I hope will be damn’d for their treatment of us with the Waggons, and every other thing where they could profit by us from their impositions, altho at the risque of our perdition.”
The controversy as to whether Forbes’s route should be through Pennsylvania or Virginia serves to bring into clear perspective one of the most interesting and one of the most important phases of our study—the meaning of the building of a road at that time to either one of those colonies. Nothing could emphasize this more than the sharpness of the quarrel and the position of those concerned in it. It meant very much to Pennsylvania to have Forbes cut a road to the Ohio in both of the two ways suggested by Washington to Governor Fouquier—it fortified her frontier and opened a future avenue of trade. The Old Trading Path had been her best course westward and her trade with the Indians had been nothing to what it would now become. But such as it had been, it was most distasteful to the Virginians to the south who called the West their own. This rivalry was intense for more than a quarter of a century and came near ending in bloodshed; the quarrel was only forgotten in the tumultuous days of 1775. General Forbes seems to have understood very well that his new road would be of utmost importance to Pennsylvania as that province would then have a “nigher Communication [than Virginia] to the Ohio;” and that was the very reason he cut it: because it was shorter—not to please Pennsylvania. If Fort Duquesne was to be captured and fortified and manned and supplied, the shortest route thither would be, as the dark days of 1764 and 1775 and 1791 proved, a desperately long road to travel.
On the other hand the building of Forbes’s road in Pennsylvania was a boon which that province far less deserved than Virginia. Virginia men and capital were foremost in the field for securing the Indian trade of the Ohio; they had, nearly ten years before, secured a grant of land between the Monongahela and Kanawha, and sent explorers and a number of pioneers to occupy the land; their private means had been given to clear the first white man’s road thither and erect storehouses at Wills Creek and Redstone; the activity of these ambitious, worthy men had brought on the war now existing. When open strife became the colonies’ only hope of holding the West, Virginia was first and foremost in the field; the same spirit that showed itself in commercial energy was very evident when war broke out, and for four years Virginia had given of her treasure and of her citizens for the cause. During this time Pennsylvania had hardly lifted a finger, steadily pursuing a course which brought down upon her legislators most bitter invectives from every portion of the colonies. And now, in the last year of the war, the conquering army was to pass through Pennsylvania to the Ohio, building a road thither which should for all time give this province an advantage very much greater than that ever enjoyed by any of the others. True, Braddock’s Road curled along over the mountains, but after the defeat by the Monongahela it had never been used except by small parties on foot and had become well-nigh impassable otherwise. We do not know what Washington wrote in the letter which Forbes so roundly criticised, but it can easily be conceived, without detriment to his character, that he might have spoken in a way Forbes could not understand concerning lethargic Pennsylvania’s undeserved good fortune.[72] But Forbes had the present to deal with, not the past, and the shortest route to the Ohio was all too long.
This became alarmingly plain in a very short time after the day, August 1, on which Bouquet began to cut it. The story of the hewing of this road cannot be told better than by quoting the fragments appertaining to it contained in the letters of those closely concerned in its building. Old St. Clair, who, as we have seen, was sent on by Forbes to Bouquet, was the advance supervisor. As early as August 12 he was writing Bouquet from “Camp on ye Side of Alleganys” that not as much progress had been made as he had hoped, and that the “Work to be done on this Road is immense. Send as many men as you can with digging tools, this is a most diabolical work, and whiskey must be had. I told you that the road wou’d take 500 Men 5 Days in cutting to the Top of the Mountain.” On the sixteenth he wrote: “A small retrencht is picked out at Kikeny Pawlings.”
| “... The Stages will be | |
| from Rays Town to the Shanoe Cabins | 11 Miles, |
| to Sr Allan McLeans camp | 9 or 10 Miles |
| to Edmunds Swamp | 9 or 10 Miles.” |
“... The Pack Horses returning from Kikoney Paulins have taken the other Road, so you may send them back loaded.”