The Youth of Washington: Told in the Form of an Autobiography

by S. Weir Mitchell

It was not alone the general who was discontented. On arriving at Wills Creek I found this letter from George Croghan, one of the most important traders on the frontier, and with a commission from Pennsylvania to make roads and secure waggons and Indian allies.

Dear Colonel: If the rest are like Sir John St. Clair, I shall be glad to be shut of the business. He swore at us for delay and said “no soldier should handle an axe, but by fire and sword he would force the inhabitants to do the work; we should be treated as traitors, and that when the General came he would give us ten bad words for one that he had given.” You, Sir, know well how hard it is to stir up our border folks and what a task to get from farmers in the spring their waggons and horses. We are doing our best. I have secured Captain Jack—a guide hard to beat.

There was more of it, and enough to afford serious thought.

During our stay I heard nothing but complaints of our want of efficiency, and no one seemed to see that it was silly to expect to find everything at hand in a land as new as ours. Captain Orme and Ensign Allen complained on one occasion to Dr. Mercer and me that our men were languid, spiritless, and unsoldier-like. Dr. Mercer, who was a hot-headed Scotchman, said he had seen undisciplined Highlanders put to rout regulars at Prestonpans and Falkirk, and that in the woods our men would beat the best grenadiers in the King’s army. Orme grew angry and said Mercer was a damned rebel; but I succeeded in quieting them, although I insisted that Captain Orme would in time change his opinion, as indeed happened. Mercer was in a constant rage and told me over and over that the officers were insolent and that the general was ill with the disease called damned foolishness. I thought him imprudent and begged him to be careful; but as he had served in ’45 with the Pretender, and come over here after his flight, he was, on that account, in bad odour with the regular officers, and, I feared, also with the general, who had been with the Duke of Cumberland upon the final bloody defeat of the rebels at Culloden. Dr. Mercer had just cause to complain, but I thought him unwise to talk so freely. He was, nevertheless, a gallant gentleman, and died a general, falling gloriously at Princeton when rallying his men.

I saw Mr. Franklin again but once before he went away. He was clearly not a man altogether to the liking of Lord Fairfax, but why, I never came to know. He seemed to me at that time a conscientious and intelligent person, very able to get along with all manner of people. I must admit that he conducted matters of gravity as if they amused him and were not serious, a method which never altogether pleased me. When I justified the general’s groaning over his many difficulties as to roads and transport and food, he said that his difficulties were of British making, and that had the force landed in Philadelphia, horses, waggons, and supplies would have been found in abundance. To this I agreed, for I thought the plan of the march ill chosen. After this the doctor amused himself with the astonishment the Indians would have when they got hold of the wigs of the officers—a jest which did not seem to me agreeable. He spoke also with much freedom of the general, and said to argue with him was useless and was like striking a pillow or reasoning with a wild animal, who had only its own thoughts and could not comprehend yours. I made no reply, and he fell to most ingenious talk about the temperature of springs and the ways of swimming. Notwithstanding his doubts, the great array of war kept me somewhat confident and cheerful until I heard that nine hundred men of the French had passed Sandusky on their way to reinforce the French on the Ohio, so that I had to write Mr. Speaker Robinson that I feared we should have more to do than merely to march up and down the hills, as the general had said would be all.

It was May 19 when the general arrived at Fort Cumberland, and June 10 before he set out to cross the mountains, and after, as the general said, more expenditure of oaths in a month than he had needed in his whole Scotch campaign with the duke, of whom the general liked to speak.

I spent much of my time while we lay at this post in learning the methods of drill and discipline, and in aiding to satisfy the Virginia recruits that it was necessary to imitate the methods of the regulars, although if it came to wood fighting I believed the English officers and men would more need to learn the ways of the rangers. Yet some who judged our people by their dislike of strict drill were of opinion that the lowness and ignorance of their officers gave little hope of their future behaviour under fire. My task of helping to train the men was given up when the general ordered me to go to Williamsburg and fetch back four thousand pounds, an errand not much to my liking.

Unfortunately, the detail was made without my having the opportunity of choice, and proved very unfit, giving me much concern and anxiety. I do not know why there was delay in assembling this detail, but eight days passed after I got my order before I was given the men. I believe they would not have been eight seconds in dispersing if we had been attacked.

Captain Horatio Gates, of a New York Independent company, advised not to take regulars, who would obey only their own officers; but I had no choice, and so set out and was gone a fortnight. On my return I slept every night in the waggon, with my precious money about me and pistols loaded. The men were drunken and disobedient until I promised strappado on our reaching camp, and indeed I was glad to be rid of the money and the guard.

I saw during this ride and later that, as Orme had told me, the men of the Forty-fourth and Forty-eighth regiments were drunken, mutinous, and disorderly, so that it was not alone our own failures to provide which made difficult the task of our unfortunate commander.