George Washington Read online

  For Dinwiddie, the signed treaty was enough.

  * * *

  Washington was facing his own troubles. A surveying trip to the Shenandoah in early spring brought on an attack of pleurisy, a lung ailment that likely contributed to his breathy speech as an adult. When recovered, Washington returned to an unsuccessful courtship of sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Fauntleroy of Richmond County. He wrote to her father that he hoped to visit Miss Fauntleroy and persuade her to reverse “the former, cruel sentence” against him. The requested visit was denied and the cruel sentence against him stood. The Fauntleroys declined to link their daughter’s future with the young surveyor who owned only frontier lands.18

  Worse was coming. Lawrence hurried home from Bermuda, reaching Mount Vernon by the middle of June. He signed over to George three lots in Fredericksburg, then prepared his will. By late July, he was dead.19

  Though certainly a death foretold, Lawrence’s passing had to sear the younger brother. Lawrence had been his guide, his protector, his best friend, the person he likely felt closest to in the world. Washington did not use words to express his feelings for Lawrence, but later made those feelings visible at Mount Vernon. He kept Lawrence’s portrait in the office where he worked every day. It hangs there still.

  Washington inherited little from his brother. Mount Vernon and its farms went to Lawrence’s widow and surviving daughter. Mining interests went to his full brother Austin. George would, however, receive those assets if all three died. Of immediate value, Lawrence’s death cleared Washington’s path for advancement. His other four brothers lacked the drive that he and Lawrence shared. George became the Washington family’s alpha male.20

  Only weeks before Lawrence died, the twenty-year-old Washington applied to be military adjutant for one of Virginia’s four districts. Neither his youth nor his inexperience proved an obstacle, not for a candidate with Fairfax support who had impressed the governor. Perhaps appointing Washington was Dinwiddie’s way of honoring Lawrence. Whatever the reason, in December 1752, Washington became a Virginia militia major, commanding the colony’s southern district.21

  Washington’s new duties were light, largely because the militia was not a serious military organization. Over peaceful decades, training had become routine, then lax, then almost farcical. Musters became social events featuring liquor and politicking. The militia’s most important function was to deter slave insurrections.22

  Nevertheless, the young surveyor had become a soldier just as Virginia was sliding into war.

  * * *

  In 1753, the French sent nearly 3,000 soldiers to a landing on Lake Erie (now Erie, Pennsylvania). They planned to construct forts along the route between the lake and the pivotal Forks of the Ohio, but drought made their boats useless in dried-up streams; then came sickness and desertion. The French advance ground to a halt. Leaving small garrisons in three forts, the rest returned to Montreal for the winter.23

  The British roused themselves. London instructed Governor Dinwiddie to “repel force by force” if the French entered the king’s lands, but since the two nations disputed which lands belonged to which king, those instructions were murky, at best. The governor resolved to send young George Washington to demand the French justification for trespassing on King George’s land. Washington’s orders from the Executive Council, drafted by Colonel Fairfax, were complicated.24

  After meeting the Half-King and other sachems, Washington was to request an escort to the French forts. Indian escorts, the reasoning went, would deter the French from making him a prisoner. Washington should deliver Dinwiddie’s demand that the French explain their presence on King George’s land. Washington also should gather intelligence: how many Frenchmen were there, their supplies, what fortifications they had built, and their goals.25

  Despite his youth, Washington had some qualifications for the mission. As a surveyor, he could produce maps and diagrams of French forts. Unlike most frontiersmen, Washington had the polish to represent His Majesty. That he spoke no French was unfortunate, but few frontiersmen did. Plus, Colonel Fairfax sponsored him.

  As Washington left Williamsburg, he could take some satisfaction in his position. Only twenty-one, he was on a critical mission for the colony. At a personal level, he now owned more than 4,000 acres, mostly in the west. His home was still Ferry Farm, still in his mother’s grip, but he was moving forward.

  * * *

  Washington recruited two aides for his mission, beginning with Christopher Gist, the Ohio Company explorer who was respected by the Indians. Washington praised Gist as tireless and patient. Jacob Van Braam, a Dutchman with military experience, would be translator.26

  The weather turned severe, bringing what Washington called “excessive rains and vast quantity of snow.” Over two weeks in December, rain or snow fell on all but one day.27 Slogging through the mess, Washington reached the Forks after three weeks. Despite having no military background, he criticized the site selected for the British fort. Moving on to Logstown, where he waited for Tanaghrisson, he found French deserters who told him about settlements as far as New Orleans.

  Tanaghrisson arrived in a rage against the French. Through an interpreter, the Half-King recounted a fierce speech he had made to the French, ordering them out of the west. The French commander, Tanaghrisson continued, had dismissed him. “I am not afraid of flies or mosquitoes,” the Frenchman had said, “for Indians are such as those . . . It is my land, and I will have it.” The Half-King dealt with Washington, forty years his junior, as an equal, but his account of French attitudes did not augur well for Washington’s mission.28

  At a council with Indian leaders, Washington announced his purpose and requested an escort to the French. Tanaghrisson pledged a guard of Mingoes, Shawnees, and Delawares. They could leave as soon as he retrieved wampum belts to return to the French, an act that would end their alliance against the British. Since Washington hoped to coax the tribes away from French influence, he waited. And waited.

  Conferring again with Indian leaders, Washington learned that though most French soldiers were again returning to Montreal for the winter, they would come back in springtime; France intended to control the region. When Washington finally left Logstown, his escort numbered but three chiefs and one young man, with no wampum belts to give back to the French. The French officer’s threats had cooled Indian support for the British.29

  After several days trudging through cold, wet forest, Washington’s party reached the French post at Venango (now Franklin, Pennsylvania). Three French officers gave Washington dinner and wine, telling him, as he recorded it, “their absolute design to take possession of the Ohio.” They disparaged the British as numerous but slow. They tried to entice Tanaghrisson with presents and liquor; when that failed, the French got drunk themselves.30

  A small French contingent escorted Washington’s party onward to Fort Le Boeuf, through four more days of “rains, snows, and bad travelling.” To cross one creek, they tied their baggage onto logs, then swam the horses across, hauling the logs behind them. At Le Boeuf, Washington presented Dinwiddie’s letter. While the French considered it, Washington examined the fort and its garrison. More than two hundred canoes on the shores announced the scope of French ambitions, while Washington worried that the Half-King might switch sides. Washington was glad to head home with the French reply in hand.31

  The horses gave out halfway to Virginia, so the men walked. The temperature plunged. Snow heaped and froze on the path. Dismayed by their slow progress, Washington resolved to abandon the trail and set off through the woods, leaving the others to manage the baggage. Failing to dissuade him from this dangerous course, Gist went with him.

  A party of French-allied Indians, according to Washington, lay in wait for them. After one of them shot at the Virginians from “not 15 steps [away], but fortunately missed,” he and Gist detained the shooter until nightfall. Gist reported that Washington refused to kill the man,
perhaps because their mission was diplomatic. After setting the shooter free, they walked through the night to get away from him.

  Title page of Washington’s journal of his frontier expedition

  Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association

  They had hoped to walk across a frozen Allegheny River, but the river’s ice extended only fifty feet from shore, leaving a torrent in the center with large ice chunks thundering through. Taking turns swinging a small hatchet, they spent a day rigging a raft. Once on the river, the flimsy craft jammed in some ice and threatened to sink. Washington fell into the frigid water, then hauled himself onto the raft with one hand. Drenched and half-frozen, they reached a midriver island. Gist was developing frostbite in his fingers and toes. Washington’s clothes froze to his body. With no alternative, they curled up and slept on the icy shore.

  Dawn brought a blessed sight: Ice had formed between the island and the far shore. They dragged themselves ten more miles to a trading post. By New Year’s Day, they reached Wills Creek. Washington called the journey “as fatiguing . . . as it is possible to conceive.” He hurried on with the French reply, reaching Williamsburg on January 16 after nearly eleven weeks of grueling, freezing travel.32

  Washington brought Governor Dinwiddie exactly what he wanted: confirmation that Britain was at risk of losing the west. The French reply claimed the Ohio valley for France, a claim reinforced by Washington’s description of new French forts. London had authorized Dinwiddie to challenge French “hostility”; building forts on King George’s land met that standard. Washington also reported that Tanaghrisson opposed the French. Thoroughly pleased with the young man’s performance, the Executive Council promptly called for him to command one hundred militia on the frontier, with Captain William Trent to raise additional fighters. Dinwiddie summoned the General Assembly to consider other measures.33

  To justify his move against the French, the governor ordered that Washington’s report be published. With customary humility about his writing skills, Washington apologized for his prose in the preface to the printed edition, claiming he wrote the report in a single day.34

  His saga was a gripping narrative that bristled with savages of uncertain loyalties, diabolical Frenchmen who swilled wine while insulting British rights, and dangerous travel in an unforgiving season. The intrepid narrator eluded every danger. American newspapers printed Washington’s report verbatim. The Gentleman’s Magazine in London did too. Washington became a hero at barely twenty-two years old.35

  For the young colonial, it was a brilliant start. He had exercised judgment and tenacity in navigating tricky diplomatic ground among Indians and Frenchmen, also displaying physical stamina, strength, and courage. The world celebrated him. It was a heady experience for one so young, an experience that might breed self-assurance. Even overconfidence.

  Chapter 6

  First Command

  Virginia’s lack of military tradition had allowed Washington to rise speedily, but it muddled the attempt to send an effective fighting force to the frontier. The colonial government had no system of recruitment or supply, and little money. Leading citizens held the title of colonel of their county militias, but few had led soldiers on campaign. The colony’s last armed expedition had been the Cartagena embarrassment that Lawrence Washington joined a decade before. A British officer had scorned those Americans as “all the banditry the colonies could afford.”1

  Nonetheless, Governor Dinwiddie proposed to send Virginians against French professionals, Canadian frontiersmen, and Indian warriors. Because the Forks of the Ohio was so important, he ordered Captain Trent, a trader, to build a fort there and hold it with a hundred “woodsmen” plus sympathetic Indians. The governor issued a parallel commission for Washington to support Trent with fifty militia from each of the two counties nearest the Forks.2

  Because Virginia militia had no duty to serve beyond the colony’s borders, Washington’s men never appeared. Many Virginians suspected that the expedition was designed to further the Ohio Company’s business. The governor pivoted to a new approach, proposing that the colony raise a volunteer force. As an incentive, he pledged that 200,000 acres of land—half near the Forks, the rest near the Ohio River—would be divided among volunteers when they completed their service.3

  Dinwiddie also sought funding for war from the colony’s General Assembly, which consisted of a twelve-member upper house (the Executive Council), appointed by the governor, and the House of Burgesses, which held two representatives elected from each county.4 Both houses and the governor had to approve legislation, which then had to be blessed by the king’s government in London. Although the lawmaking process could consume a year or more, Virginians had greater political autonomy than most human beings in 1759. Both legislative bodies met in closed session. Only their final actions were announced publicly.

  The House of Burgesses, discontented with the governor’s spending, approved only £10,000 for the military push, while requiring that a legislative committee approve all expenditures. Dinwiddie thought that condition illegal, but he swallowed it. Money in hand, he announced that the colony would recruit six companies of fifty volunteers each.5

  Events did not wait for the politicians. Captain Trent’s company, with some Indians, reached the Forks in mid-February. In the freezing Appalachian winter, Tanaghrisson showed his British allegiance by laying the fort’s first timber, but he complained that the British never intended to stay. Growing nervous over reports that four hundred Frenchmen were approaching, Trent’s men urged Washington to hurry with reinforcements.6

  Even with the offer of free land, few volunteers stepped forward, and those few, Washington reported, were “loose, idle persons” without homes or clothes. Supplies ranged from haphazard to nonexistent. Washington complained that he had neither weapons nor uniforms for the twenty-five men on hand. He feared the men could not survive the winter, while they raised “a pretty general clamor” about not being paid.7

  Undeterred, the governor pressed on, awarding overall command to Joshua Fry, a former math professor at the College of William & Mary. Fry had negotiated with Indians and served as a militia captain, but had never seen combat. Though Washington acknowledged that his inexperience disqualified him for the top position, he agitated for “a commission above that of a major, and to be ranked among the chief officers of this expedition.” Dinwiddie complied, appointing him lieutenant colonel.8

  On April 2, Washington marched out of Alexandria with 120 untrained men he called “selfwilled, ungovernable.” When they reached Winchester a week later, another forty joined them under the command of a Scot, Adam Stephen. Destined to be Washington’s colleague and rival, Stephen was a physician nearly a decade older. He had served in the Royal Navy, then began a medical practice in Virginia. Colonel Fairfax recommended him.9

  Washington scoured the Winchester area for wagons and horses to haul supplies to the Forks two hundred miles away. After a week, he fumed that some of his horses were so broken down that “the soldiers were obliged to assist them up the hills.” He claimed twenty-four wagons from surrounding farms, but only ten arrived. Washington’s seizures became so high-handed that the county court issued three warrants for his arrest. The sheriff returned all three warrants without executing them, noting meekly that Washington “would not be taken he kept me off by force of arms.”10

  Feeding the men was a challenge. In springtime, no crops were ripening, and settlers had consumed their winter stores. On forest paths, horses found little grazing, so wagons had to carry their feed. Livestock grew gaunt. Nonetheless, Washington pressed on, fearing that the French were closing in on Trent’s company at the Forks. Dinwiddie relayed encouraging information. London had ordered to Virginia three “independent companies,” colonist-soldiers commanded by regular army officers—two from New York and one from South Carolina. Washington rode ahead to Wills Creek, still searching for horses and wagons.11 />
  On April 22, a messenger arrived from the Forks with bad news. More than a thousand Frenchmen, with eighteen cannons and four hundred boats, had reached the Forks. The garrison’s thirty-odd defenders briskly surrendered and left. Tanaghrisson’s message was that without British aid, “we are entirely undone, and imagine we shall never meet again.”12

  It was a deflating failure. Without firing a shot, the French already had taken the principal objective of both sides. The failure was not Washington’s. Had he managed to reach the Forks with his ill-prepared company, he would have been overwhelmed too. The French had prepared their advance for two years and executed it methodically. The British had resolved on a military effort three months before and then mostly ran in circles.

  To reassure Tanaghrisson, Washington wrote that the British were clearing a road for “a great number of our warriors that are immediately to follow with our great guns, our ammunition, and our provisions.” Having substantially overstated the facts, he pledged to continue resisting the French. The young officer’s next steps demonstrated more energy than judgment. Following a council with his officers, Washington set off for the junction of Redstone Creek and the Monongahela River, about thirty-five miles upstream (to the south) from the Forks. He proposed to build a base there to support a waterborne advance on the Forks. The move was ill conceived. Washington’s company was too small to oppose the French, while his supply situation grew worse every day.13

  Through the next several weeks, Washington struggled to control his men while fielding alarming reports of French strength. He sent sixty men to improve the road toward Redstone Creek while he tried to determine the best route from there to the Forks, setting out in a canoe to scout alternatives. No reinforcements arrived. The independent company from South Carolina, commanded by Captain James Mackay, was in Virginia by early May but made no move toward the frontier. Colonel Fry lingered at Alexandria.14