The news of the defeat, with such particulars as were first transmitted north, will be found in the New Hampshire Provincial Papers, vi. 413, and in Akins’ Pub. Doc. of Nova Scotia, 409, etc. The shock was unexpected. Seth Pomeroy, at Albany, July 15, 1755, had written that the latest news from Braddock had come in twenty-five days, by an Indian a few days before, and it was such that, in the judgment of Shirley and Johnson, Braddock was at that time in the possession of Duquesne. (Israel Williams MSS., i. p. 154.) Governor Belcher announced Braddock’s defeat July 19, 1755. New Jersey Archives, viii., Part 2d, 117. In a letter to his assembly, Aug. 1 (Ibid., p. 119), he says: “The accounts of this matter have been very various, but the most authentic is a letter from Mr. Orme wrote to Gov. Morris, of Pennsylvania.”
Governor Sharp’s letters to Lord Baltimore and Charles Calvert are in Scharf’s Maryland (i. pp. 465, 466).
The Rev. Charles Chauncy, of Boston, embodied the reports as they reached him (and he might have had excellent opportunity of learning from the executive office of Governor Shirley) in a pamphlet printed at Boston shortly after (1755), Letter to a friend, giving a concise but just account, according to the advices hitherto received, of the Ohio defeat.[1322]
Two other printed brochures are of less value. One is The life, adventures, and surprising deliverances of Duncan Cameron, private soldier in the regiment of foot, late Sir Peter Halket’s. 3d ed., Phila., 1756 (16 pp.).[1323] The other is what Sargent calls “a mere catch-penny production, made up perhaps of the reports of some ignorant camp follower.” The Monthly Review at the time exposed its untrustworthiness. It is called The expedition of Maj.-Gen’l Braddock to Virginia, ... being extracts of letters from an officer, ... describing the march and engagement in the woods. London, 1755.[1324]
Walpole[1325] chronicles the current English view of the time.
There was a young Pennsylvanian, who was a captive in the fort, and became a witness of the preparation for Beaujeu’s going out and of the jubilation over the return of the victors. What he saw and heard is told in An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences in the life and travels of Col. James Smith during his captivity with the Indians, 1755-59.[1326]
Let us turn now to the French accounts. The reports which Sparks used, and which are among his MSS. in Harvard College library, were first printed by Sargent in his fourth appendix.[1327] These and other French documents relating to the campaign have been edited by Dr. Shea in a collection[1328] called Relations diverses sur la bataille du Malangueulé [Monangahela] gagné le 9 juillet 1755, par les François sous M. de Beaujeu, sur les Anglois sous M. Braddock. Recueillies par Jean Marie Shea. Nouvelle York, 1860 (xv. 51 pp.).[1329]
Pouchot[1330] makes it clear that the French had no expectation of doing more than check the advance of Braddock.
The peculiar difficulties which beset the politics of Pennsylvania and Virginia at this time are concisely set forth by Sargent in the introduction of his Braddock’s Expedition (p. 61), and by Parkman in his Montcalm and Wolfe (vol. i. p. 329). Dulany’s letter gives a contemporary view of these dissensions.[1331]