George Washington; or, Life in America One Hundred Years Ago.

by John S. C. Abbott

Governor Dinwiddie, a reckless, headlong Scotchman, was governed mainly by impulse, and was accustomed to speak and act first, and reflect afterward. He despised the French, and could say with Lord Nelson, “I drew in hatred for the French with my mother’s milk.” He paid no respect whatever to the considerations upon which the French founded their claim to the valley of the Ohio; but affirmed it to be the height of impudence for Frenchmen to pretend to any title to territory, which Englishmen claimed as theirs. Such insolence, he declared, was not to be tolerated for a moment; and he determined that he would immediately drive the intruders, neck and heels, out of the valley.[24]

Arrogance is pretty sure to bring its own punishment. But we are often bewildered by the thought that, in the incomprehensible government of God over this world, the punishment often falls upon the innocent, while those who merit it go free.

Energetically the irate governor marshalled an army of four hundred men. The idea that the cowardly French could present any effectual resistance to his lion-hearted Englishmen, seems never to have entered his mind. The orders issued to this army, so formidable in those days, were very emphatic and peremptory.

“March rapidly across the mountains. Disperse, capture, or kill all persons—not subjects of the king of Great Britain—who are attempting to take possession of the territory of his majesty, on the banks of the Ohio river, or any of its tributaries.”

George Washington was appointed colonel of this regiment. A wiser selection could not have been made. His administrative abilities were of the highest order; his exalted reputation invested him with authority; he was acquainted with the route, as no other man in the colony could be; his bravery was above all suspicion, and his experience as a surveyor would enable him to select the best strategic points to command the vast territory.

At the confluence of the Monongahela and the Alleghany, he had spent a day in constructing a raft. There he had been wrecked. The delay which these incidents had caused, enabled him very carefully, with his practised eye, to study the features of the country.

This spot, he decided, with instinctive military skill, to be the most appropriate place for England to rear a fortress and establish a garrison, which would constitute the most effectual point d’appui (point of support), from which expeditions could emerge for the destruction of the French trading posts. This whole region was then an unbroken, howling wilderness. Buried in the glooms of the forest, far away from all observation, Washington hoped to rear a strong fortress before the French should have any suspicion of what was going on. Having completed these works, and rendered them impregnable to any force which France could bring against them, he would then build strong flat-bottomed boats, armed with cannon, and manned with troops, in which they could drift down the Ohio, and attack by surprise, and destroy, all the French military and trading posts found upon the banks.

Contemplating this plan in the light of humanity, it was a very sad one. “War is cruelty. You cannot refine it.” At these posts there were many humble emigrants, fathers and mothers, little boys and girls. They were innocent of all crime. Struggling against the enormous taxation, of king and nobles, in France, they had left the thatched cottages of their lowly ancestors, hoping to find homes of more comfort in the wilderness of the New World. It is dreadful to think of the consternation, which must have spread through such a little settlement of pioneers, when suddenly, on some bright, sunny morning, the terrible gun-boats, crowded with armed soldiers, rounded a bend in the river, and opened their fire. “Bayonets,” says a French proverb, “must not think.” Soldiers must obey orders, regardless of the tears and pleadings of humanity. The orders were peremptory.

“Apply the torch and lay every building in ashes. The dying matron, helpless in her bed, and the new-born babe, must look out for themselves. Disperse, capture, or kill all the inhabitants. Leave nothing behind but smouldering ruins and mangled corpses.”

Such was the plan, in its awfulness, when contemplated by the eye of ordinary humanity. In a military point of view the plan, thus devised, was worthy of all admiration. As a means for the attainment of the desired end, it could not have been better. The expedition, however, was not popular, and it was found necessary to resort to impressment to fill the ranks. By the Provincial law, the militia could not be ordered to march more than five miles beyond the bounds of the colony. And it was at least doubtful whether the French were in Virginia, though Governor Dinwiddie declared the Pacific Ocean to be the western boundary of the State. Unfortunately for the success of the expedition, the French engineers were by no means behind the English in military skill. In descending to the Ohio, from the lakes, they had been accustomed to take canoes, on the upper waters of the Alleghany; and often, in fleets propelled by the paddles of friendly Indians, they had encamped, for the night, upon the forest-crowned eminences at the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers. They also had decided that this was, above all others, the spot upon which France should rear her central fortress, and where she should store her abounding supplies.