It will be remembered that Admiral Keppel,[1300] who commanded the fleet which brought Braddock over, had furnished four cannon and a party of sailors to drag them. An officer of this party seems to have been left at Fort Cumberland during the advance, and to have kept a journal, which begins April 10, 1755, when he was first under marching orders. What he says of the fight is given as “related by some of the principal officers that day in the field.” The diary ends August 18, when the writer reëmbarked at Hampton. It is this journal which is the second of the papers given by Sargent. The third is Braddock’s instructions.[1301]
The Duke of Cumberland, as commander-in-chief, directed through Colonel Napier a letter (November 25, 1754) to Braddock, of which we have fragments in the Gent. Mag., xxvi. 269, but the whole of it is to be found only in the French version, as published by the French government in the Précis des Faits. Sargent also gives a translation of this, collated with the fragments referred to.
FORT CUMBERLAND AND VICINITY.
Reduced—but not in fac-simile—from a sketch among the Sparks maps in the library of Cornell University, kindly submitted to the editor by the librarian. The original is on a sheet 14 × 12 inches, and is endorsed on the back in Washington’s handwriting, apparently at a later date, “Sketch of the situation of Fort Cumberland.”
Parkman had already told the story of the Braddock campaign in his Conspiracy of Pontiac,[1302] but, with the aid of some material not accessible to Sargent, he retold it with greater fulness in his Montcalm and Wolfe (vol. i. ch. 7), and his story must now stand as the ripest result of investigations in which Bancroft[1303] and Sparks[1304] had been, as well as Sargent, his most fortunate predecessors, for Irving[1305] has done scarcely more than to avail himself gracefully of previous labors. The story as it first reached England[1306] will be found in the Gentleman’s Mag., and, after it began to take historic proportions, is given in Mante’s Hist. of the Late War in North America, London, 1772, and in Entick’s General History of the Late War, London, 1772-79.[1307] Braddock himself was not a man of mark to be drawn by his contemporaries, yet we get glimpses of his rather unenviable town reputation through the gossipy pen of Horace Walpole[1308] and the confessions of the actress, George Anne Bellamy,[1309] which Parkman and Sargent have used to heighten the color of his portraiture. He did not, moreover, escape in his London notoriety the theatrical satire of Fielding.[1310] His rise in military rank can be traced in Daniel MacKinnon’s Origin and Hist. of the Coldstream Guards, London, 1833. His correspondence in America is preserved in the Public Record Office; and some of it is printed in the Colonial Records of Penna., vi., and in Olden Time, vol. ii.[1311] His plan of the campaign is illustrated in N. Y. Col. Docs., vi. 942, 954.[1312] Of the council which he held at Alexandria with Shirley and others, the minutes are given in the Doc. Hist. New York, ii. 648.[1313]
From Braddock’s officers we have letters and memoranda of use in the history of the movement. The Braddock orderly books in the library of Congress (Feb. 26-June 17, 1755) are printed in the App. of Lowdermilk’s Cumberland, p. 495. The originals are a part of the Peter Force Collection, and bear memoranda in Washington’s handwriting. His quartermaster-general, Sir John St. Clair, had arrived as early as January 10, 1755, to make preliminary arrangements for the march, and to inspect Fort Cumberland,[1314] which the provincials had been building as the base of operations.[1315]
From Braddock’s secretary, Shirley the younger, we have a letter dated May 23, 1755, which, with others, is in the Col. Rec. of Penna., vi. 404, etc. Of Washington, there is a letter used by Parkman in the Public Record Office.[1316] Of Gage, there is a letter to Albemarle in Keppel’s Life of Keppel, i. 213, and in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xxxiv., p. 367, is a statement which Gage prepared for the use of Chalmers. A letter of William Johnston, commissary, dated Philadelphia, Sept. 23, 1755, is in the Eng. Hist. Review (Jan., 1886), vol. i. p. 150. A letter of Leslie (July 30, 1755), a lieutenant in the 44th regiment, is printed in Hazard’s Penna. Reg., v. 191; and Ibid., vi. 104, is Dr. Walker’s account of Braddock’s advance in the field. Livingston, in his Rev. of Military Operations, 1753-56, gives a contemporary estimate.[1317] Other letters and traditions are noted in Ibid., iv. pp. 389, 390, 416.[1318] The depositions of some of the wagoners, who led in the flight from the field, are given in Col. Rec. of Penna., vi. 482.[1319]
The progress of events during the preparation for the march and the final retreat can be gleaned from the Dinwiddie Papers. Sargent found of use the Shippen MSS., in the cabinet of the Penna. Hist. Society. A somewhat famous sermon, preached by Samuel Davies, Aug. 17, 1755, before an independent troop in Hanover County, Va., prophesying the future career of “that heroic youth Col. Washington,”[1320] shows what an impression the stories of Washington’s intrepidity on the field were making upon observers. The list of the officers present, killed, and wounded, upon which Parkman depends, is in the Public Record Office.[1321]