The Wonderful Story of Washington Part 4

Was.h.i.+ngton's intimate a.s.sociate, Dr. Hugh Mercer, was so severely wounded in the shoulder that he could not keep up with the fugitives.

He hid in a fallen tree and witnessed the terrible scenes of the battlefield after the soldiers had fled. The wounded were tortured, scalped and all were stripped of everything the Indians could use.

Then the wild horde left, yelling through the woods, waving aloft the scalps. The Indians were bedecked with glittering uniforms, and loaded with booty.

Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography that "this whole transaction gave us the first suspicion that our exalted ideas of the powers of British regular troops had not been well founded."

What Was.h.i.+ngton thought about it all is well summed up and very tersely expressed in a letter to his half-brother Augustine. It shows us what all this had done for the loyal and patriotic mind of Was.h.i.+ngton. It reveals how his mind, like that of other colonists, was being prepared for the event, that led to a break with the home-country England.

In that very expressive letter he says, "I was employed to go a journey in Winter, when I believe few or none would have undertaken it, and what did I get by it?--my expenses home! I was then appointed, with trifling pay, to conduct a handful of men to the Ohio. What did I get by that? Why, after putting myself to a considerable expense in equipping and providing necessaries for the campaign, I went out, was soundly beaten and lost all! Came in and had my commission taken from me; or, in other words, my command reduced, under pretense of an order from home (England). I then went out a volunteer with General Braddock, and lost all my horses, and many other things. But, this being a voluntary act, I ought not to have mentioned it; nor should I have done so, were it not to show that I have been on the losing order ever since I entered the service, which is now nearly two years."

This historical summary was the experience in divers ways of very many colonists, but they did not have any; suggestion of how that bitter experience was really to become a great blessing to the cause of liberty throughout the earth.

III. SOME PERSONAL INTERESTS AT HOME

Here and there we catch glimpses of Was.h.i.+ngton showing that he was not the sculptured majesty that was pictured for his youth by writers in the early decades of the nineteenth century. We prefer to think of him as sympathetic, gallant, and enjoying the familiar courtesies of common life. That Was.h.i.+ngton was not without social friends.h.i.+p is shown in a note which he received from three young ladies written him from Belvoir on his return from the French and Indian war. It speaks for itself:

"Dear Sir:

"After thanking heaven for your safe return, I must accuse you of great unkindness in refusing us the pleasure of seeing you this evening. If you will not come to us tomorrow morning very early, we shall be at Mount Vernon.

"SALLIE FAIRFAX.

ANN SPEARING.

ELIZABETH DENT."

There is no record to complete the picture of these young ladies'

interest in Was.h.i.+ngton, but if they could have such a view of his sociability with such propriety, we may be sure that he was not above the common human sympathies that fill the hard lines of life.

Was.h.i.+ngton's connection with the army had ceased at the death of Braddock, but he was still adjutant-general of the northern division of the Province. Braddock's defeat had thoroughly frightened the colonists, and panic-stricken rumors surged around that French and Indians were about to make incursions here and there and everywhere.

The slow-going legislative bodies suddenly woke up and voted the organization of ample supplies and men. An undignified scramble took place for favorites to be given high commands. Was.h.i.+ngton was urged by his friends to be a candidate, but he refused. As to this matter he wrote, "If the command should be offered me, the case will then be altered, as I should be at liberty to make such objections as reason, and my small experience, have pointed out."

In the midst of this turmoil he received a letter from his mother begging him not to go back into the war but to return to his home-life and become a business man. His reply to her is quite significant of the character of Was.h.i.+ngton:

"Honored Madam:

"If it is in my power to avoid going to the Ohio again, I shall; but if the command is pressed upon me by the general voice of the country, and offered upon such terms as can not be objected against, it would reflect dishonor upon me to refuse it; and that, I am sure, must, and ought to give you greater uneasiness than my going in an honorable command. Upon no other terms will I accept it. At present, I have no proposals made to me, nor have I any advice of such an intention, except from private hands."

But, it so happened that on the same day, after this letter had been sent away, he received the news that he had been appointed commander-in-chief of all the forces of Virginia, and upon the terms he had outlined to his friends. Besides, his closest friends were appointed officers next in command to him.

This was a triumph over Governor Dinwiddie, who had a special favorite whom he had pressed hard for the appointment. It was also made for a man who had risen to that esteem among his countrymen, not through victories but through defeats, not through success but through failure. And, it must be remembered, that Was.h.i.+ngton was not yet twenty-four years old. But the general esteem in which he was held may be gathered from a statement made in a sermon at the time of his appointment, by the Rev. Samuel Davis. It might have been mere enthusiasm, but, in the light of such great subsequent events, it looked like prophecy.

He turned from his religious theme to the needs of the colonies, and then spoke of "that heroic youth, Colonel George Was.h.i.+ngton, whom I can not but hope Providence has. .h.i.therto preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country."

CHAPTER VII

THE FATE OF THE OHIO VALLEY

I. FRONTIER FEARS AND PANICS

There was an abundance of responsibility at once for Was.h.i.+ngton in his new official position. All the frontiers were being attacked by Indians urged on by the French. Was.h.i.+ngton tried to get his troops together to meet the Indians at the outposts, but he was unable at the main post to muster more than twenty-five of the militia. The others declared that if they had to die they preferred to die with their women and children.

In his first report to the Governor, he wrote, "No orders are obeyed, but such as a party of soldiers or my own drawn sword enforces.

Without this, not a single horse, for the most earnest occasion, can be had,--to such a pitch has the insolence of these people arrived, by having every point hitherto submitted to them. However, I have given up none, where His Majesty's service requires the contrary, and where my proceedings are justified by my instructions; nor will I, unless they execute what they threaten,--that is, to blow out our brains."

This was naturally at the period of Was.h.i.+ngton's greatest loyalty to his Sovereign, and also shows that some of Braddock's notions of military authority still lingered with him. Perhaps it is better to say that he recognized the military necessity for obedient discipline in a common purpose and result, or there could be no successful army.

We may easily guess that the insolence to which he refers was the frontiersman's disrespect for military authority and his growing belief in his own right to choose the manner of his service or his death. These men had been as badly treated by the Braddock style of authority as Was.h.i.+ngton had been, and most of his troubles doubtless arose from their memory of insolence in the officers.

As an example of the panic and confusion of the times, while Was.h.i.+ngton was at Winchester endeavoring to get his troops organized, a man came running into town, one Sunday afternoon, saying in breathless terror that a horde of Indians was only twelve miles off, killing and burning everything they came to. Was.h.i.+ngton remained up all night preparing for the attack. At about dawn on Monday morning, another man arrived, declaring that a host of Indians was now within four miles of the town. He had himself heard the guns of the Indians and the shrieks of the victims. The scouts sent out by Was.h.i.+ngton had not yet returned, and the terror-stricken people at once guessed that they had been ambushed and killed.

All that Was.h.i.+ngton could get together equipped to meet the Indian drive was only forty men. At the head of these he rode forth to the scene of ma.s.sacre and carnage. All that they ever found was three drunken troopers who had been yelling in their carousal on the way to town and firing off their pistols.

Was.h.i.+ngton arrested them and brought them in as trophies of the Indian war.

"These circ.u.mstances," Was.h.i.+ngton wrote in his report, "show what a panic prevails among the people; how much they are all alarmed at the most usual customary crimes; and yet how impossible it is to get them to act in any respect for their common safety."

A Captain arriving at that time with recruits from Alexandria, reported that, in coming across the Blue Ridge, he had met a crowd of people hastening away in terror, whom he could not stop. They all told him that the Indians had overwhelmed the country and that Winchester had been sacked and burned.

Was.h.i.+ngton saw that nothing but confusion and cross purposes could prevail under the conditions as they then existed. Accordingly, he set about to reform the methods and the laws. Under his management, order at last came out of chaos. He also learned the uses of military show to give confidence and he ordered rather gorgeous uniforms to be sent him from England. This was probably necessary in order also to retain the respect of the young English officers for whom it was often true that the clothes made the man.

II. POLITICAL INTRIGUE AND OFFICIAL CONFUSION

Early in 1756, in order to get the necessary co-operation among the colonies, to settle the bitter quarrels as to rank among officers, and to give the Virginia colony a better idea of the plan for the war, Was.h.i.+ngton decided to visit General s.h.i.+rley, at Boston. General s.h.i.+rley had succeeded General Braddock as commander-in-chief of all the colonies.

Was.h.i.+ngton, with his aides in brilliant uniform, taken care of by a retinue of colored servants in finest livery, all riding in a pompous cavalcade, representing the style of aristocratic Southern gentlemen, made a profound social sensation all along the line of their travel, especially in Philadelphia, New York and Boston. After ten days'

conference in Boston, his mission being successful, he returned to Virginia as he had come.

On Was.h.i.+ngton's return to his headquarters at Winchester, he found the people in more desperate terror than ever, and this time with good reason. The French and Indians were indeed ravaging the country within twenty miles. Any hour the enemy might sweep down upon the wretched town and destroy the people. If Was.h.i.+ngton could not save them they were indeed lost. It is said that the women surrounded him with terror-stricken cries, holding up their children, and imploring him to save them from the savages.

The feelings of the young commander may be appreciated from the letter he wrote to Governor Dinwiddie.

"I am too little acquainted with pathetic language," he said, "to attempt a description of these people's distresses. But what can I do?

I see their situation; I know their danger, and partic.i.p.ate in their sufferings, without having it in my power to give them further relief than uncertain promises. The supplicating tears of the women, and the moving pet.i.tions of the men, melt me into such deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease."

But the Virginia newspapers very freely cast the blame for the Indian's success on the military management. Was.h.i.+ngton was deeply stung with these attacks and he declared that he would resign at once, if it were not for the immediate dangers pressing so hard upon them.

Then his friends began writing him encouraging letters and he was strengthened to see the issues through to some end.

"The country knows her danger," said one of the Virginia legislators, "but such is her parsimony that she is willing to wait for the rains to wet the powder, and the rats to eat the bowstrings of the enemy, rather than attempt to drive her foes from her frontiers."

But gradually through more blundering and still more confusion of purpose, after the French had begun to lose heavily in the North, a course of concerted action was once more organized against Fort Duquesne, as the center of supplies for the French and Indians in their frontier warfare. Scouts continually brought in reports that Fort Duquesne had become greatly weakened and it was believed by all that this place should now be taken to make good the success on the northern frontier.

At length such an expedition was on the way, and Was.h.i.+ngton wrote to the Commander, General Forbes, to be allowed to join the expedition with his command. This request was accepted, and, on July 2, 1758, Was.h.i.+ngton arrived at Fort c.u.mberland.