George’s share in the settlement of Lawrence’s affairs, his interests in Belvoir, and his numerous activities on his own plantation did not occupy all his thought. He had too deep a devotion to arms, even after his unhappy experience over his commission, to ignore events subsequent to his resignation. Much of interest had occurred during the autumn and winter; still more was in prospect. Both Governor Dinwiddie and Governor Sharpe, now acting Commander-in-Chief, were resolved to press the campaign against the French in 1755 and recover the territory and prestige lost the previous year. Plans for the operations of the spring and summer had five essential aspects: First, the Colonies must have the leadership of officers and troops “from home”; second, the Colonies themselves must supply soldiers of their own and provisions for them and for the forces from England; third, Colonials and Redcoats should seek the assistance of all the Indians who could be won to their side; fourth, to prevent hunger and loss of time when the season for active fighting began, a large store of provisions must be accumulated in advance and transported as far towards the Ohio as practicable; fifth, for the proper storage and custody of these rations, a fort was to be constructed at Wills Creek.
Indian alliances, Colonial recruits, the begrudging supply of stinted funds by suspicious assemblies, the tedious upbuilding of provisions at Wills Creek—all these preparations looked to the arrival of disciplined regulars from England. Well-trained troops led by professional soldiers would be the core of the column that would advance irresistibly to the Ohio and drive away or destroy the French. This was the conviction of Dinwiddie. He had warned the Lords of Trade: “. . . without two Regiments of men from Britain, we shall not be able effectually to defeat the unjust invasion of the French.” By December 12, 1754, he had received confirmation of his hopes that the troops would be sent—that transports had been taken in October and that Capt. Augustine Keppel would convoy them with a fifty-gun ship. Shortly after hearing this good news, Dinwiddie learned also that two additional regiments were to be raised in New England and were to be led by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts and Sir William Pepperell, the first native American ever to be made a baronet.
As this information was printed in the Virginia Gazette, George soon saw it at Mount Vernon. He felt a new stirring of his military ambition, and he admitted that he would like to share in the campaign; but he took no step to recover his commission or volunteer for service. Almost every subsequent issue of the newspaper whetted his appetite for honors. He had just returned from a visit to Col. John Baylor’s plantation and probably to Ferry Farm when word came that a distinguished British officer had reached Williamsburg from England—Sir John St. Clair, baronet of Scotland and former Major of the Twenty-second Foot, who had been assigned as Deputy Quartermaster General of forces in America with local rank as Lieutenant Colonel. George probably learned in February that St. Clair most heartily had damned the road from Winchester to Wills Creek as the worst he ever had traveled. At that outpost, now styled Fort Cumberland, St. Clair had reviewed the Independent Companies and had discharged more than forty of the men as unfit for service. The Deputy Quartermaster General manifestly was a positive officer who knew his own mind.
While the Colonials were beginning to discover what manner of person St. Clair was, they received information that the two promised regiments were en route and that they were commanded by Col. Sir Peter Halkett and Col. Thomas Dunbar. During the last week in February, George ascertained that on the night of February 19/20, Commodore Keppel’s flagship, the Centurion, had dropped anchor off Hampton along with the Syren and the Norwich, on which last vessel was Maj. Gen. Edward Braddock, His Majesty’s Commander-in-Chief of the forces in North America.
The Virginia Gazette announced also that the General was accompanied by “Captain Orme, Aide-de-Camp and Mr. Shirley, secretary.” George read and envied. These young men were doing exactly what he wanted to do: they were in close daily relationship with an experienced soldier of long service from whom they could learn much of the “military arts” that fascinated George. Soon the young Virginian identified “Mr. Shirley” as William Shirley, son of the Governor of Massachusetts. A little later George found that Braddock was to have another aide-de-camp, Roger Morris, who bore the surname and might be a kinsman of the Governor of Pennsylvania. If they could serve with Braddock as members of his “military family,” why should not a Virginian also? George did not solicit appointment directly, but he took pains to write a letter of congratulations to Braddock on the General’s arrival in America and thereby he let His Excellency know there was such a person as George Washington.
Braddock remained in Williamsburg, hard at work. Newspapers and returning travelers told of vigorous recruiting to fill out the expected British Regiments, and of the organization of Virginia companies of rangers, carpenters and light horse to be commanded by officers of Braddock’s selection. In addition George, of course, heard gossip of Braddock, Keppel and St. Clair, because three such notables could not come to the quiet Virginia capital and not create chatter. Never had there been such planning, such talk of ships and soldiers, such contracts—for two hundred hired wagons, among other things, and 2500 horses. In comparison with George’s expedition of 1754, the scale of everything was trebled or quadrupled; promises made by the Colonials were in proportion.
To the young master of Mount Vernon, the resigned Virginia Colonel, all this was at once far off and familiar. He knew what the preparations involved and forecast, but he was out of the service . . . until March 14, 1755, when this letter was delivered to him:
Sir: The General having been informed that you expressed some desire to make the campaign, but that you declined it upon the disagreeableness that you thought might arise from the regulation of command, has ordered me to acquaint you that he will be very glad of your company in his family by which all inconveniences of that kind will be obviated.
I shall think myself very happy to form an acquaintance with a person so universally esteemed and shall use every opportunity of assuring you how much I am
Sir
Your most obedient servant
ROBERT ORME aid de camp
Williamsburg, Mch. 2, 1755
The opportunity of joining Braddock’s staff came, unfortunately, at a time when George’s military ambitions clashed with his personal economy. The lease and partial equipment of Mount Vernon had involved considerable expense; he had no manager of his property; if he followed his impulse and went again to the Ohio he might lose heavily at the very time he otherwise might profit. The impulse persisted; so did the doubt. Balancing gain and sacrifice, he at length decided to postpone a final answer until he met Braddock and talked with the General.
George did not have long to wait. The last of the transports from Ireland arrived at Hampton with the rear companies and stores of Brad-dock’s command. The men were ordered to proceed on the same vessels to Alexandria, whither Braddock himself took ship with Keppel and Dinwiddie. On March 28 these celebrities disembarked at the proud new town.
Braddock decided quickly that the tall young Virginian was worth attaching to his family. He offered George a Captain’s commission by brevet and had it explained carefully this was the highest position he had authority to fill. In turn, George described his perplexity over entering the service in any capacity and asked whether, if he did join the staff, he could devote to his own affairs the time that would elapse before Braddock was ready to establish headquarters at Wills Creek. When Braddock readily agreed to this, George thanked him and said he would give an early answer to the offer.
An interview with the General was not all. George must have made several visits to the quarters of the younger officers or often have met them socially, because he soon was on friendly, bantering terms with Orme and Shirley. When George left the company of these young officers, it always was with the feeling that if he joined Braddock he would be associated with pleasant men not much older than himself. Deliberately he debated whether he should accept the invitation
to be one of them. Pride and previous utterance led him to exclude even the possibility of accepting a Captain’s commission by brevet. The essential question was whether he could afford to serve as a volunteer aide. He decided about April 1 that he would do this, if he could perform the duty the General expected of him without too great or too prolonged neglect of his private affairs. The bargain struck, George took pains to let his friends know he was to serve as a volunteer and without pay.
Secrecy was not a virtue of military planning at so great a distance from the French. Without being inquisitive, George soon ascertained that Braddock’s plan had been drafted in Britain, chiefly by the Duke of Cumberland, and was covered by instructions and by letters. These provided for attack at three points that formed a concave arc from the Ohio at Fort DuQuesne to Lake Champlain. First, Braddock was to march from Wills Creek to the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela. If, as expected, he made short work of Fort DuQuesne, he was to look to Fort Niagara, near the western end of Lake Ontario and on Niagara River, about two hundred miles north and slightly east of the first objective. In addition, a plan was formulted for an attack on Nova Scotia. It was a plan to appeal to a young soldier because, if its daring was rewarded, it would crush the enemy and terminate in speedy triumph the war with France. Washington had yet to discover how readily even experienced soldiers may be tempted to let their imagination outmarch their armies and their ambition disdain the limitations of their resources. The Virginian had lost his small battles with mud and mountains and haggling farmers who would risk a war to save a wagon. Would these commanders from home show him where he had erred and how he might have won?
Washington heard, also, of the Governors’ other deliberations with Braddock—how they regretfully had told the General the Colonies would not provide a common fund for the support of the campaign, and how they had pledged their Colonies to provide a fund for presents to friendly savages and to make arrangements for garrisoning Fort DuQuesne when Braddock had captured it and had moved on towards Fort Niagara.
In the remembrance of the hunger of his men the previous year, George felt that transportation was the problem of all problems for a successful advance. In his opinion, the mountains would be crossed with minimum difficulty by a large train of pack horses. Braddock was a believer in wheeled transport rather than in pack animals; but he increasingly was disturbed by the difficulty and expense of procuring wagons. In some manner he had misunderstood what was told him about the distance over the mountains to Fort DuQuesne. He thought he had to traverse fifteen miles of rough country. When he learned that he had ahead of him between sixty and seventy miles of mountain and hill he became peevishly sensitive to everything that delayed an early start on the long and toilsome road.
Non-fulfillment of Colonials’ promises to supply wagons shaped Braddock’s next move. He had been induced to send part of the troops through Maryland because he had the assurance that the farmers of that Colony would not rent their wagons for use outside its bounds but would supply vehicles on the Maryland side of the Potomac. Now that he was ready to have the artillery follow the infantry toward the frontier, he found that the wagons promised by Sharpe were not available for the guns. Angrily the General sent an express to St. Clair, who had gone to Winchester and was expecting, when he had repaired the road, to proceed to Wills Creek. After a few days, Braddock impatiently decided to ride to Frederick, Maryland, and see for himself what could be done there to get wagons.
George remained behind to finish his business, and, on May 1, started out to join Braddock in Frederick. A long, roundabout ride it was, and one that fatigued even George, but it carried him to the Maryland village—a place of abundance—just in time to catch Braddock before that officer was departing in disgust and wrath over conditions that in some respects duplicated and in others exceeded those George had to endure the previous year.
The General had arrived at Frederick on the twenty-first; St. Clair had reached the settlement the same day. They found few cattle accumulated for the troops and no wagons ready for the journey to Wills Creek. Braddock, complaining of the cost of everything, was forced at heavy expense to send into the country around Frederick to purchase beeves; and he was compelled to threaten dire things unless the Justices of the Peace procured wagons for the movement of stores and ammunition to Fort Cumberland. At length twenty-five wagons were delivered, but twenty-five only, and some of them not fit for the road. Braddock almost went mad. The expedition was at an end, he swore; he could not go on. He must have not less than 150 wagons and must have them speedily!
The visitor who toned down Braddock was a soft-spoken man of forty-nine, regarded as one of the ablest as well as suavest of Philadelphia leaders. He was Benjamin Franklin, who had come to Frederick in an effort to assuage the wrath of Braddock and St. Clair against Pennsylvania and he believed he had removed some of their prejudices. Now, in desperation, the General appealed to Franklin: would he undertake to contract in Pennsylvania for 150 wagons and 1500 horses to be delivered by May 10 at Fort Cumberland? Franklin agreed to make the effort, whereupon Braddock advanced £800 from the army chest for the initial expenses.
Braddock, reaching Winchester May 3, lingered unwillingly there because he had been led to believe, from what Dinwiddie had told him at Williamsburg, that Indian Chiefs would meet him in the Valley town and would join in a council designed to strengthen alliances against the French. The General found no Indians at the rendezvous and heard that none had been there. As excessively hot weather was added to disappointment, Braddock probably was boiling inwardly and outwardly, but, of course, he was unwilling to stir until he was convinced that no Indians were on the road to attend the council.
Braddock left Winchester for Wills Creek May 7 in the conviction that longer waiting for the Indians would be time wasted. With his staff and the Virginia Troop of Light Horse, he reached Cresap’s on the eighth. All hands rested on the ninth; but on the tenth they were astir. Dunbar’s Regiment started early; later Braddock climbed into his chariot and gave the nod. Off rolled the vehicle. George, Orme, and the others attended at a slow trot; the Virginia Troop acted as guard and escort. The ride was pleasant through the greenery of early May and without dust. Not far from Wills Creek, George and his companions passed the Forty-eighth Regiment on the road. The men gazed at the fat gentleman in the carraige; the drums beat the “Grenadiers’ March”; the Colonials marveled: A new style of war had come to the wilderness.
Fort Cumberland now was a formidable-looking structure, but crudely put together. To George, the setting was familiar, but there were differences from his earlier experiences at the outpost. Never had George seen so many soldiers at the Fort, or so many supplies. That was the principal difference. The next was the contrast between a professional commander and staff and the extemporized, inexperienced organization George had known under Fry and later under Innes. A third difference was symbolized by twelve words written in the orderly book of Headquarters that day, May 10, 1755: “Mr. Washington is appointed aid de camp to His Excellency General Braddock.” That meant new honor, new authority, new opportunity.
George’s duties as aide to General Braddock scarcely accorded at the outset with the distinction the young Virginian attached to the post. His principal regular assignment was to see that the orderly book was written up carefully. Further, in common with all other officers, George was supposed to wait on the General at the morning levee, held daily between ten and eleven o’clock. Then and always, Washington received the fullest consideration of Braddock, who soon formed an attachment for him and gave him patronage any of the Southern Governors would have coveted: in the hands of his new assistant the General placed several blank commissions for ensigns, and authorized him to fill them out in the name of young men he approved. This pleasing evidence of Braddock’s goodwill was appreciated, but the selection of a few ensigns for these commissions, and the discharge of his trivial routine duties occupied only a small part of George’s time.
Ge
orge doubtless saw before many days what some of his comrades-in-arms already had observed—that something besides horses and wagons was lacking. Beneath the show of strict conformity to military standards, and of blunt, open dealing on the part of the General, there was much slowness, inefficiency, stupidity, lack of resourcefulness and some laziness. As one officer subsequently wrote, Braddock “was a man of sense and good natured too, though warm and a little uncouth in his manner—and peevish—withal very indolent and seemed glad for anybody to take business off his hands.” Young Washington, in the still-sensitive memory of the difficulties of transportation in 1754, wondered whether it would be possible for Braddock to get the artillery over the mountains. If that could be done, George believed the military task beyond the ridges could be discharged with ease and honor. A second concern was that of assistance from the Indians. Besides the certainty of delay and the uncertainty of Indian allegiance, a third difficulty developed during the first days at Wills Creek. As a result of high temperature and poor packing, much salt meat spoiled. Braddock at once set up a public market but offerings were far below the requirements of the camp.
Although Braddock advanced some gold for the encouragement of his feeble trade, funds for these purposes were running low because of the high prices demanded for everything. He had now to replenish his stock of money, and on May 15 he gave George instructions to proceed to Hampton and to get £4000 from the Paymaster of the expedition, John Hunter. George got back to Wills Creek with the money on May 30, the fifteenth day after his departure. He had made excellent time and found himself at the journey’s end in “tolerable health,” as he put it, though he was somewhat worn.
Much had happened during his absence. All the troops intended for the expedition had arrived or soon would. The artillery had experienced much trouble in reaching Fort Cumberland because of the usual shortage of wagons and teams. Had not Lt. Col. Thomas Gage impressed vehicles and horses as he went forward, he might never have reached Wills Creek. The last contingent known to be on the road, Dobbs’s North Carolina Company, tramped into quarters the day of George’s return. There then were in the camp the two British Regiments of seven hundred men each, three Independent Companies, and one North Carolina, one Maryland and nine Virginia companies, together with sixty regulars of the artillery train and thirty seamen accustomed to the use of block and tackle in moving heavy guns. The Maryland Company had made a favorable impression on St. Clair, in spite of the fact that recruits from the Colony for the regulars had included some convicts and a number of servants who had scurried to the colors in the hope of terminating their indenture. The Virginia troops had been well drilled by Ensign Allen of the regulars, but, in the judgment of Orme, “their languid, spiritless and unsoldierlike appearance, considered with the lowness and ignorance of most of their officers, gave little hope of their future good behavior.”
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