Sparks[1275] says he found the original sworn statement of Ensign Ward, who surrendered to Contrecœur, in the Plantation Office in London, which had been sent to the government by Dinwiddie. The French officer’s summons is in De Hass’s West. Virginia, p. 60, etc.
There is another journal of Washington, of use in this study of what a contemporary synopsis of events, 1752-54, calls the “weak and small efforts” of the English.[1276] It no longer exists as Washington wrote it. It fell into the hands of the French at Braddock’s defeat the next year (1755), and, translated into French, it was included in a Mémoire contenant le précis des faits, avec leurs pièces justificatives pour servir de réponse aux Observations envoyées par les ministres d’Angleterre dans les cours de l’Europe.[1277] There were quarto and duodecimo editions of this book published at Paris in 1756;[1278] and the next year (1757) appeared a re-impression of the duodecimo edition[1279] and an English translation, which was called The Conduct of the late ministry, or memorial containing a summary of facts, with their vouchers, in answer to the observations sent by the English ministry to the Courts of Europe, London, 1757.[1280] Sparks says that the edition appearing with two different New York imprints (Gaine; Parker & Weyman), as Memorial, containing a summary of the facts, with their authorities, in answer to the observations sent by the English ministry to the Courts of Europe, was translated from a copy of the original French brought by a prize ship into New York. He calls the version “worthy of little credit, being equally uncouth in its style and faulty in its attempts to convey the sense of the original.”[1281] Two years later (1759) the English version again appeared in London, under the title of The Mystery revealed, or Truth brought to Light, being a discovery of some facts, in relation to the conduct of the late ministry.... By a patriot.[1282]
This missing journal of Washington, and other of these papers, are given in their re-Englished form in the second Dublin edition (1757) of a tract ascribed to William Livingston: Review of the military operations in North America from the commencement of the French hostilities on the frontiers of Virginia in 1753 to the surrender of Oswego, 1756 ... to which are added Col. Washington’s journal of his expedition to the Ohio in 1754, and several letters and other papers of consequence found in the cabinet of General Braddock after his defeat.[1283]
There is also in this same volume, Précis des Faits, a “Journal de compagne de M. de Villiers (en 1754),” which Parkman[1284] says is not complete, and that historian used a perfected copy taken from the original MS. in the Archives of the Marine.[1285] The summons which Jumonville was to use, together with his instructions, are in this same Précis des Faits. The French view of the skirmish, of the responsibility for it, and of the sequel, was industriously circulated.[1286] On the English side, the London Magazine (1754) has the current reports, and the contemporary chronicles of the war, like Dobson’s Chronological Annals of the War (1763) and Mante’s Hist. of the Late War (1772), give the common impressions then prevailing. Sparks, in his Washington (i. p. 46; ii. pp. 25-48, 447), was the first to work up the authorities. Irving, Life of Washington, follows the most available sources.[1287]
The Indian side of the story was given at a council held at Philadelphia in December, 1754.[1288] The transaction, in its international bearings, is considered as Case xxiv. by J. F. Maurice, in his Hostilities without Declaration of War, 1700-1870, London, 1883.
For the battle of Great Meadows and surrender at Fort Necessity,[1289] the same authorities suffice us in part, particularly Sparks;[1290] and Parkman points out the dependence he puts upon a letter of Colonel Innes in the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, vi. 50, and a letter of Adam Stephen in the Pennsylvania Gazette (no. 1,339), 1754, part of which he prints in his Appendix C.[1291] The provincial interpreter,[1292] Conrad Weiser, kept a journal, which is printed in the Col. Rec. of Penna., vi. 150; and Parkman found in the Public Record Office in London a Journal of Thomas Forbes, lately a private soldier in the French service, who was with Villiers.[1293] That the French acted like cowards and the English like fools is given as the Half-King’s opinion, by Charles Thomson, then an usher in a Quaker grammar-school in Philadelphia, and later the secretary of Congress, in his Enquiry into the Causes of the Alienation of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians, London, 1759,—a volume of greater rarity than of value, in Sargent’s opinion.[1294]
A map of the most inhabited part of Virginia, drawn by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson in 1751, as published later by Jefferys, and included by him in his General Topography of North America and the West Indies, 1768 (no. 53), shows the route of Washington in this campaign of 1754.
In Pittsburgh, 1854, was published Memoirs of Major Robert Stobo of the Virginia Regiment,[1295] with an introduction by Neville B. Craig, following a copy of a MS., procured by James McHenry from the British Museum. The publication also included, from the Pennsylvania Archives, copies of letters (July 28, 1754), with a plan of Duquesne which Stobo sent to Washington while himself confined in that fort as a hostage, after the capitulation at Fort Necessity, as well as a copy of the articles of surrender.[1296] These letters of Stobo were published by the French government in their Précis des Faits, where his plan of the fort is called “exact.”
The most extensive account of the battle of Monongahela and of the events which led to it is contained in a volume published in 1855, by the Pennsylvania Historical Society, as no. 5 of their Memoirs, though some copies appeared independently. It is ordinarily quoted as Winthrop Sargent’s Braddock’s Expedition.[1297] The introductory memoir goes over the ground of the rival territorial claims of France and England, and the whole narrative, including that of the battle itself (p. 112, etc.), is given with care and judgment. Then follow some papers procured in England for the Penna. Historical Society by Mr. J. R. Ingersoll. The first of these is a journal of Robert Orme, one of Braddock’s aids, which is no. 212 of the King’s MSS., in the British Museum.[1298] It begins at Hampton on Braddock’s arrival, and ends with his death, July 13. It was not unknown before, for Bancroft quotes it. Parkman later uses it, and calls it “copious and excellent.” It is accompanied by plans, mentioned elsewhere. There is also a letter of Orme, which Parkman quotes from the Public Record Office, London, in a volume marked America and West Indies, lxxiv.[1299]