Forbes, writing to Bouquet, refers as follows to the new road August 7: “Extremely well satisfied with your accounts of the Road, and very glad to find that you have, entered upon the making of it;” (August 9): “I hope your new road advances briskly, and that from the Alleghany Hill to Laurell Hill may be carrying forward by different partys, at the same time, that you are making the pass of the Allegany practicable;” (August 15): “I hope the new road goes on fast and that soon we shall be able to take post at Loyal Haning. I see nothing that can facilitate this more than by still amusing the Enemy by pushing Considerable parties along Mr Braddock’s route, which parties might endeavour to try to find communications betwixt the two roads where they approach the nearest, or where most likely such passages can be found. As it will be necessary very soon to make a disposition of our small Army I beg you will give your thoughts a little that way. At present I think the greatest part ought to be assembled at Raestown to make our main push by that road, while Coll Washington, or some other officer might push along the other road and might join us if a Communication can be found when called upon. But this is only an Idea in Embryo....” (August 18): “In carrying forward the new road I think there might easily be a small road carried on at the same time, at about 100 yards to the right and left of it, and parallel with it, by which our flanking partys might advance easier along with the line. I dont mean here to cut down any large trees, only to clear away the Brushwood and saplins, so as the men either on foot or on horseback may pass the easier along....”
Bouquet forwarded this order to St. Clair on August 23, also writing: “Colonel Burd is to command on the West of Lawrell Hill, and to march without delay and before the Road is cut to Loyal H— [Hannan].” On the same date St. Clair wrote Bouquet from Stoney Creek as follows: “I wrote you yesterday ... that three waggons have got to this place, the Road not so good as I shall make it.... I hope to get to Kikoney Pawlins to morrow night, if not shall do it next day. Tell Mr Sinclair to send me my Down Quilt the weather is cold.” That evening he wrote again, in reply to Bouquet’s letter, from “Kikoney Paulins:” “It is impossible for me to tell you any more than I have done about the Road to L— H— [Loyal Hannan]. I required 600 Men to make the Road over the Lai Ri—ge in three days on condition I was to see it done my Self, and perhaps I might reach L— H the 3d Day. I expect to get the Road cleared as far as the clear fields a Mile from the foot of L—R on this Side, by the time the A—y [army] comes up, and work afterwards with as many men as the Other Corps will give me.” From Edmonds Swamp St. Clair wrote next (no date): “I got the Waggons safe as far as this post yesterday the road is so far good, and if it had not rain’d so hard I was in hopes to report the Road good this Night to Kikoney Pawlings.... If you think the Road from Rays town to the Shanoe Cabins will be wet in the autumn, it wou’d be well to open the Road over the two Risings, and it wou’d be shorter for our Returned Waggons. I shall send out a Reconoitering party 25 Miles northward that we may know the Paths that lead to sidling Hill.”
By the last of August all parties concerned were beginning to realize that the young Washington had been telling some plain truth when he urged Forbes not to try this new route. On the twenty-seventh Bouquet wrote St. Clair: “I am extremely disappointed in my Expectation of the Road being open before this time to the foot of Lawrell Hill ... push that Road with all possible dispatch ... the Chief thing we want is the Communication open for Waggons to Loyal Hannon. Employ all your Strength there, and Colonel Burd has order to cut backwards to you from L. Han.... Capt Dudgeon and Mr Dapt will oversee some Part of the Road, and every body is to stir and make amend for their unaccountable slowness.” Bouquet blamed St. Clair for the delay and Forbes wrote him from Shippensburg August 28: “The slow advance of the new road and the cause of it touch me to the quick, it was a thing I early foresaw and guarded again[st] such an assistant with all the force and Energy of words that I was master of, but being over ruled was resolved to make the most I could of a wrong head ... the Virginians who are able to march ... might advance as far forward upon Braddock’s road as to that part of it which is most contiguous to our second deposite, which I think might be about Saltlick Creek.... The using of Braddock’s road I have always had in mind was it only a blind—pray lose no time as that does not oblidge us to march, before we see proper.”
Forbes alone realized that despatch was not to be, necessarily, the secret of the success of his campaign, though he had urged Bouquet to hasten the roadmaking as fast as possible. He had his eyes fixed elsewhere than on the Allegheny ranges; he knew the Indians at Fort Duquesne were weary of the listless campaign; that Bradstreet had been sent against Fort Frontenac (which, if captured, would shut Fort Duquesne completely off from Quebec); that by the first of September a hundred Indians were already gathered at Easton ready for a treaty; that the brave Post was now among the Delawares bringing the final opportunity for them to abandon the French cause. On September 2 he wrote Bouquet hinting of all these circumstances and urging delay in everything but mere road-building. On the sixth of September Forbes wrote Pitt:
“In my last I had the honour to acquaint you, of my proceedings in the new road across the Alleganey mountains, and over Laurell Hill, (leaving the Rivers Yohieganey and Monongahela to my left hand) strait to the Ohio, by which I have saved a great deal of way, and prevented the misfortunes that the overflowing of those rivers might occasion.
“I acquainted you likewise of the suspicions I had, of the small trust I could repose in the Pennsylvanians in assisting of me with anyone necessary, or any help in furthering the service that they did not think themselves compelled to do by the words of your letter to them.... My advanced post consisting of 1500 men, are now in possession of a strong post 9 miles on the other side of Laurell Hill, and about 40 from Fort Du Quesne, nor had the Enemy even suspected my attempting such a road till very lately, they having been all along securing the strong passes, and fords of the rivers upon Genl Braddock’s route.”[73]
Forbes had been in Philadelphia while Bouquet was struggling away at Raystown with his thousand perplexities. Early in July he had proceeded to Carlisle where he remained stricken down “with a cursed flux” until the eleventh of August. Two days later he reached Shippensburg, where he was again prostrated and unable to advance until the middle of September. It is difficult to realize that the campaign had been directed so largely by this prostrate man whose “excruciating pains” often left him “as weak as a new-born infant” and who, when able to be about camp, retired “at eight at night, if able to sit up so late.” All of this might well have been stated long ago but it is of particular significance now that Forbes’s correspondence of the whole summer has been systematically reviewed. The very trials and perplexities, the crying need for his bravery and resolution, seemed in a measure to keep him alive.
No one can study this campaign without yearning to know more of the impetuous soul which threw its last grain of strength into making it a triumphant success. The Indians called Forbes “The Head of Iron”—and no words can better describe the man. Giving all praise possible to Bouquet for his sturdy and active service throughout the summer, it is still plain that the dying Forbes was the magnetic influence that made others strong. Those were dark days at Raystown when at last the pale general arrived upon the ground; “had not the General come up,” wrote an officer on the spot, “the Consequence wou’d have been dangerous.”[74] Bouquet was an invaluable man but the “Head of Iron” in command was needed.
The remainder of the campaign has been often told and in detail. Washington and his Virginians came northward over the newly-cut road to Fort Bedford at Raystown and plunged westward to the Loyalhannan, to which point Armstrong and St. Clair pushed the road-building. Washington himself supervised the cutting of Forbes’s road westward from Fort Ligonier toward Fort Duquesne. Much as he had wrangled with Bouquet as to the propriety of making a new road he was as good as his word and worked heroically for its success. Never, even in Braddock’s death-trap on the Monongahela, did he come nearer giving his life to his country. Forbes’s first check came when Grant’s command, sent forward from Fort Ligonier to reconnoitre Fort Duquesne, was cut to pieces on Grant’s Hill within sight of the French fort. Eight hundred men went on the expedition; two hundred and seventy-three were killed, wounded, or captured. Bouquet reported the disaster to Forbes on the seventeenth of September, upon which the sad man “deeply touched by this reverse,” writes Parkman, “yet expressed himself with a moderation that does him honor.” “Your letter of the seventeenth I read with no less surprise than concern, as I could not believe that such an attempt would have been made without my knowledge and concurrence. The breaking in upon our fair and flattering hopes of success touches me most sensibly. There are two wounded highland officers just now arrived, who give so lame an account of the matter that one can draw nothing from them, only that my friend Grant most certainly lost his wits, and by his thirst of fame brought on his own perdition, and ran great risk of ours.” The brave generosity of these words is not so significant as the fact that this pain-racked man, far behind on the road, had such a grasp of the minutest detail of the whole campaign that Bouquet, he believed, would not even send out a scouting party in force without his “knowledge and concurrence.”
A letter from Forbes to Bouquet dated Reastown, September 23rd, contains some interesting paragraphs: “The description of the roads is so various and disagreeable that I do not know what to think or say. Lieutenant Evans came down here the other day, and described Laurell Hill as, at present, impracticable, but he said he could mend it with the assistance of 500 men, fascines and fagots, in one day’s time. Col. Stephens writes Col. Washington that he is told by everybody that the road from Loyal Hannon to the Ohio and the French fort is now impracticable. For what reason, or why, he writes thus I do not know; but I see Col. Washington and my friend, Col. Byrd, would rather be glad this was true than otherways, seeing the other road (their favourite scheme) was not followed out. I told them plainly that, whatever they thought, yet I did aver that, in our prosecuting the present road, we had proceeded from the best intelligence that could be got for the good and convenience of the army, without any views to oblige any one province or another; and added that those two gentlemen were the only people that I had met with who had shewed their weakness in their attachment to the province they belong to, by declaring so publickly in favour of one road without their knowing anything of the other, having never heard from any Pennsylvania person one word about the road; and that, as for myself, I could safely say—and believed I might answer for you—that the good of the service was the only view we had at heart, not valuing the provincial interest, jealousys, or suspicions, one single two-pence; and that, therefore, I could not believe Col. Stephen’s descriptions untill I had heard from you, which I hope you will very soon be able to disprove. I fancy what I have said more on this subject will cure them from coming upon this topic again.”