I had been sent forward to build bridges, to corduroy swamps for the cannon, and to make roads. I was not to bring on hostilities, but I was to assert the King’s title and, at need, to resist the French. The orders were well fitted to get me into trouble, but the capture of Trent’s fort and men somewhat aided my decision, for this was an act of open war. While thus occupied, a runner fetched me letters, and among them one from Lord Fairfax.
As adjutant of the Northern Division since I was nineteen, I was prepared for much that his lordship’s letter conveyed, but it went in some respects beyond what I then knew or was prepared for, and, I may add also, much beyond the views which his lordship came later to entertain, when men were obliged to elect as between loyalty to the King and disloyalty to human rights.
This letter now before me runs as follows:
Greenway Court.
My dear George: Yours received from Alexandria, and thank you for the attention when you were so busily engaged. I am always pleased to be acquainted with anything to your advantage, and was gratified at your being chosen to be of the force. I desire you, however, to understand that your worst enemies will not be the French, or the fickle Indians, but those in the rear.
There is of late years a great desire for freedom in all the colonies, and men are disposed to dispute the too royal sense of prerogative on the part of the governors. Whenever, as now, money is to be voted, the houses in the several colonies are apt to use the occasion to dispute it, and to bargain for something else as a reward for their grant of supplies. The withholding of money has been the chief means of governing kings by our own Commons. I blame it not. But this present reluctance is without cause—foolish, and at a wrong season. As to the difficulty of disciplining our people you know enough, and will know more; but they will always fight, which may console for other defects. The want of an organized commissary you will feel of a surety, but less than with regulars, who do not know as do our people how to diet their English bellies, or how to forage at need on wood and river. Prepare, too, for desertion and drunkenness, which is the curse of the land. But I must forbear, lest I discourage you, although that I consider not to be easy. I would that you smoked a pipe. It confers great equanimity in times of doubt, and the Indians hold it to be helpful in council; for while a man smokes he cannot discourse, and thus must needs obtain time for sober reflection, for which reason it would be well that women took to the pipe, a custom which would greatly conduce to comfort in the condition of armed neutrality known as the married state. Charles Sedley once said in my company that the pipe was the bachelor’s hearth, and I have found it a good one. Indeed, my dear George, when I reflect upon the many statues of worthless kings and the monuments to scoundrels in graveyards where the dead lie and the living lie about them, I am inclined to set up a fine memorial at Greenway Court to the unknown Indian who invented this blessing of the Pipe. He must have been a great genius.
Wishing you the best of luck, and that I were young enough to be with you, I am,
Yours,
Fairfax.