Washington's Revolution: The Making of America's First Leader (7 page)

What could he do in 1756 and 1757 to mount a defense of the scattered settlements of Virginians in the West? He found himself responding to the Indian raids through limited forays by his own undermanned regiment, almost always after farmers had been slaughtered, their houses burned, and their livestock and crops destroyed.
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The governor and the legislature had insisted that forts placed at important points on the upper reaches of the Potomac and its tributaries would afford protection against the marauders; Dinwiddie called them “stockade forts,” but they usually were nothing more than palisades and a building or two. They were seen as places from which Virginia forces could operate, most often emerging on patrols or in pursuit of Indians who attacked farms located fairly close by. They did not prove to be of much value, as the Indians slipped by or around them whenever they chose not to attack the soldiers within the stockades. The troops frequently demonstrated that they preferred to remain within the forts rather than fight the Indians outside. Desertion offered a remedy to reluctant fighters when the forts failed to establish their worth. Washington had opposed their use, expecting that they would scatter the Virginia Regiment, not enable it as a cohesive unit to establish a useful defense.
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Fort Cumberland troubled him even more in 1756 than the smaller stockade forts and, he argued, ought to be abandoned, its garrison pulled back to Fort Loudoun, at Winchester, Virginia. His reason for this judgment was that Cumberland was useless against the Indians who slipped by easily and conducted their raids south of it. They did not attack it; they ignored it and made their way around it with ease. Although Washington did not spend much time pointing out that Fort Cumberland lay in Maryland, he did point it out, and noted that Virginia was supplying Maryland troops stationed there. This was not a minor matter. It was a continual source of resentment that festered until the war reached its climax.
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The old adage says that “failure teaches more than success.” If so, Washington learned much in the mid-1750s, for he and his Virginia forces failed repeatedly. Their failures were not in spite of strength—they had little, and the weaknesses of their fighting ability overwhelmed all of Washington’s skills, which were in the process of development.

Almost from the time he took over the leadership of Virginia’s forces, he realized that he must learn the full extent of the problems of defending the West. But it was not until November 1756 that he made an inspection that carried him through the settlements, from Virginia into the Carolinas. He was not surprised by what he found; he was disgusted. By this time his convictions about the incapacity of the militia were well established, and he found nothing to change his mind. The militia in Frederick, Hampshire, and Augusta Counties simply appalled him, and he described their condition in a letter to Dinwiddie. In riding to the Augusta courthouse accompanied by militia, he found that they galloped along like a mob on horseback, heedless of security, “with order, regularity, circumspection and vigilance … matters of derision and contempt.” That this group reached the courthouse in about seven days without being interrupted by the Indians he attributed to “the protection of Providence.” Otherwise, he said, “we must have fallen a Sacrifice, thro’ the indiscretion of these hooping, hallooing, Gentlemen-Soldiers!”
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These complaints about the militia covered only a small part of the indictment he drew up against them in the letters to the governor and others. He had long reported the difficulty of attracting them to military service. Some would agree to only a month’s enlistment, and half of that time was spent coming to camp and going home. In the western settlements, militiamen lived off the inhabitants they were to protect. While riding with a militia company, Washington watched with revulsion as the group slaughtered cattle before every meal, eating only part of the beef and then, on resuming their march, refusing to take what was not consumed, instead killing more cattle when they next ate. They would “sooner starve than carry a few days’ provisions on their backs,” he said.
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His conclusions about the forts followed naturally from his analysis of the militia: They were virtually useless, their garrisons incapable of maintaining discipline or an alert watch for marauding Indians. Only one captain was present in the forts when he visited on his tour of inspection. Fort Cumberland took its place at the top of his list of supposed strong points—he, of course, regarded it as anything but strong and remarked on its faulty location in his report to Dinwiddie. With protections of this kind, the people of the backcountry were disappearing, and Washington predicted that in a little time, “scarce a family will live in Frederick, Hampshire, or Augusta Counties.”

Much of what Washington desired in a policy designed to meet the threat from the Indians and the French was well known to the governor and the legislature. The most effective way of defeating these enemies in the West would involve an offense—a march to Fort Duquesne, destroying Indian settlements along the way and in the end defeating the French, who supported the Indians in their attacks in Virginia. He soon came to see that the government in Williamsburg would not adopt this policy—not out of a fear or love of the French, but because of a belief that it would cost more in money and men than Virginia could give.

Washington had pushed his plan whenever he could, in letters to the governor and to John Robinson, Speaker of the House of Burgesses, and in meetings with them and others in Williamsburg. He was an active but unpersuasive advocate. Knowing the limits within which he was expected to observe, he suggested that lesser means should involve the frontier inhabitants themselves. If they could be persuaded to abandon their isolated plantations in favor of nearby townships, defense of them could be provided by the small force in existence, presumably at Winchester.

Washington laid out the story of weakness in the West in detail on November 9, 1756, after returning from his tour of inspection. Dinwiddie reacted in anger a week later, characterizing Washington’s charges against the militia as “vague.” He claimed to want details (names of the offending militia, perhaps) about the behavior Washington had described. Dinwiddie insisted that he had heard it all before, and Washington’s repetition of it failed to help him raise the militia to an effective level. The charge of vagueness apparently applied to only two of the three counties Washington had visited; as for the third, the “Charges attending the Militia of August is monstrous … a great Imposition on the County.” On two points he seemed to agree with Washington: “the necessity of an offensive war” and that the use of the forts “will be a poor defense to our Frontiers.”
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Dinwiddie’s comments on all these matters were preliminary to the meat of his reply—a direct order to Washington to march one hundred men at Winchester to Fort Cumberland, which he was to make as strong “as you can in Case of an Attack.” This order made it clear that Washington was to move his command himself—not leave the shift to a subordinate. As for the fort at Winchester, a “subaltern” officer
was to be left in charge there. Dinwiddie delivered these orders, he said, with the backing of the Virginia Council, in Williamsburg, and enclosed the minutes of its meeting of November 15. About three weeks later he reported that John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun, now in overall command of British forces in North America, had written stating his emphatic agreement that Fort Cumberland should not be abandoned but, indeed, strengthened. According to Dinwiddie, Lord Loudoun had issued a warning against leaving supplies behind if Cumberland were abandoned. Such action, Loudoun purportedly wrote, “will not have a good Appearance at Home.”
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Dinwiddie’s rebuke, with its order to reinforce Cumberland, arrived a few days later, and Washington, on his way to Williamsburg, wasted no time in answering it. His letter did not evade any of the governor’s charges, but explained all that Dinwiddie found objectionable. One such matter concerned Washington’s tone in his letter of November 9, on the subject of the Catawba Indians, which Dinwiddie had considered “unmannerly.” Washington said in this connection that he “intended” no insults to anyone, and that in fact he “endeavoured to demean myself in that proper respect due to Superiors.” Nor did he intend to conceal anything about the misbehavior of militia officers—a charge made by Dinwiddie—but tried to hint in his comments that this was a problem for others to address. (Washington’s authority did not extend beyond the Virginia Regiment to the command of the militia.)
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The most significant matter raised by Dinwiddie was Fort Cumberland, “an affair” he characterized as being “of great Consequence.” So “great,” apparently, that he convened the Virginia Council, which advised reinforcing it with one hundred men from Fort Loudoun.
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Washington’s next letter, on November 24, 1756, told the governor that he did not have one hundred soldiers at Winchester to send to Cumberland. By Washington’s count, he would have only eighty-one men available in early December to send off. But send them he would, he said, even if it meant leaving Fort Loudoun unprotected and the “Kings Stores” defenseless. The fort was not quite finished, and the materials there for completing the construction, he said, would be “pillaged & destroyed” by Winchester’s inhabitants. Dinwiddie’s surprise at Washington’s report that shifting one hundred soldiers from Fort Loudoun to Cumberland would leave that fort and Winchester virtually without a defense was evident in his response. Surprised but not
moved to change his orders, he added to Washington’s disgust by telling him that if he could not move the eighty-one from Fort Loudoun, he should draw the men from the garrisons of stockade forts. Washington saw such a move as making matters worse, but he complied, and the transfer was made in the next few weeks. He was to write Dinwiddie three more letters in early December. The first reminded Dinwiddie once more of the consequences of shifting so many men and resources to Cumberland. Though the governor in the past had expressed a concern for the suffering of settlers exposed to Indian raids, his willingness to shift soldiers from Virginia to Fort Cumberland seemed to betray an indifference to the consequences for those in and around Winchester. Washington’s letter reported “the terror and consternation” of the people under the protection of Fort Loudoun. It also provided a list of material losses that could be expected if the fort were stripped of its garrison. Ultimately, he concluded, Winchester itself would be captured by the enemy.
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Despite his ragged protests against shifting headquarters and himself to Cumberland, he made his way there early in the new year. He had declared that he would obey the governor’s orders, and he did.

It was to be only a short stay, for in May John Dagworthy assumed command of Fort Cumberland with Maryland troops. The British had ordered the change, in part at least because the fort lay outside of Virginia, in a location that called for Maryland responsibility.

Washington had carried out his orders, but before he acted he went behind the governor’s back with a letter to the newly appointed commander in chief in America, Lord Loudoun. Here he elaborated without distortion the weaknesses in the regiment’s structure and in its public support. Its men were deficient in skills and character, thanks to the method of their recruitment. Many of those taken from the counties’ draft were “Vagrants” and “Miscreants,” ill disciplined and prone to desertion. Good and bad alike were frequently owed back pay and were without clothing. Uniforms seemed to be nonexistent. Whatever the soldiers’ condition, there were too few of them, and he believed that had there been greater numbers of troops, they would have been no match for the Indians, who were skilled and savage in their tactics. What he told Loudoun was a mixture of the history of the regiment’s struggle and an explicit statement of its grievances. Washington also offered up flattery of Loudoun, awkwardly joined to a request that the
Virginia Regiment be made an official part of the British army, a “better Establishment,” in Washington’s term. He did not shrink before the task of recommending himself by invoking General Braddock’s name, saying that had Braddock “survived his unfortunate Defeat, I should have met with preferment equal to my Wishes.” Braddock had promised “to that Purpose,” he told Loudoun, and so had William Shirley.
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This claim for himself followed a discussion of the difficulties of waging war in America. The implication was obvious: He had performed well, and he deserved the recognition that a royal commission would confer. His recitation of the difficulties he had faced was not an exaggerated account, and the problems he laid before Loudoun were the same ones he had complained of to Dinwiddie. When the conflict with the French began, Washington wrote, it was greeted in Virginia as a “Fiction,” indeed a scheme to “promote the Interest of a private Company.” He was referring to the Ohio Company, an organization of investors, mostly American, who had organized to open up the Ohio Country. Skeptical of warnings that the French were at work to extend their power into the West, Virginia’s leaders delayed a response, and before anyone knew it the French had seized control of the Forks of the Ohio by building Fort Duquesne.
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Loudoun was not inspired by Washington’s letter to provide solutions to the problems of the regiment; indeed, he probably did not bother to read the letter, though an aide who replied for him wrote that the commander seemed pleased with Washington’s account. Washington had been determined to see Loudoun even before he wrote this report on his troubles, and in February 1757 he rode to Philadelphia to talk with him. Loudoun let him cool his heels until late March and then, in their meeting, snubbed him.