This answer referred specifically to a situation that developed in mid-June. When Washington returned to Winchester from Williamsburg he found that several raids to the west had been undertaken by the Virginians and their Indian allies. One such thrust had been made by the natives who had brought in four scalps and two prisoners. Major Lewis later led toward the Ohio a scalping party of considerable size, but, as he had not been able to prevail on the savages to take more than eight days’ provisions with them, he soon was back with no scalps on any warrior’s belt. Two parties remained out, one with whom Capt. Robert Spotswood had started in the direction of Fort DuQuesne, and another under Lieut. James Baker, who had taken fifteen Indians and five white men toward Logstown.
An express on June 12 brought news that Baker had returned on the ninth with five French scalps and one French prisoner. That left only Spotswood and his party afield. Washington was beginning to feel concern for them when, during the night of June 15/16, an express rode into town with this dispatch:
Fort Cumberland June 14, 1757
Sir,
Six Cherokee Indians who just now came from Fort DuQuesne, say that six days ago they saw a large body of troops march from that garrison with a number of wagons and a train of artillery, and by their route, must intend an attack on this garrison.
I am, sir, your most humble servant,
JNO. DAGWORTHY.
The Indians said they had heard a great gun fired near the battlefield of Monongahela. The French, according to the Cherokees, had “numbers of wheeled carriages and men innumerable and had marched two days before they quit the Monongahela waters.” Washington credited the news—called for a council of all the commissioned officers then in Winchester. Unanimously the council voted to recall the garrisons to Winchester and hold them there, working on the fort, till more was known about the French advance.
The orders issued by Washington during the next few hours showed that he was acquiring experience. Washington sent Dagworthy an account of the steps that had been taken. “I have no doubt that a very considerable force will be with you in a very short time,” he added. For three days thereafter, if George had further word from Fort Cumberland, it merely repeated rumor and echoed suspense.
On the twenty-first Washington received a somewhat embarrassed letter from Dagworthy. Other Indians had arrived from the vicinity of Fort DuQuesne and asserted that previous reports of a French advance with artillery and wagons were untrue. A large scouting party had left the Ohio and was moving in the direction of Fort Cumberland, but the tale about vehicles and heavy guns was the imagining of badly scared young warriors who had hurried eastward after a glimpse of the enemy.
These more experienced natives of the second party Dagworthy sent to Winchester in order that the Virginians might question them. Washington did so and concluded that they had not actually been close to Fort DuQuesne but that they had been on the trail of a considerable force of French and Indians who were moving towards the English settlements. These enemies had no artillery and they were following a route they recently had been employing for all their raids, whether against Virginia, Maryland or Pennsylvania. Dagworthy’s first alarm might have been due to the mistakes of an interpreter; but there still was sufficient doubt about the whole expedition to justify the retention for a time of the militia who were arriving.
By June 24 suspense was diminished. Thereafter, Washington observed hopefully the indications that the French and Indians from Fort DuQuesne, on reaching the English settlements, had divided into separate scalping parties which did comparatively little damage. At the end of the first week in July there still were signs of hostile savages; but by mid-July Washington could report, “we are pretty peaceable.”
The last echo of Captain Dagworthy’s false alarm was not pleasant to the ears of Virginians. If the men at Winchester and on the South Branch could mock the Marylanders for creating foes through tales told by friends, Dagworthy’s men soon could say that Washington’s advisers would make enemies by misusing friends. In blundering confidence that he knew how to punish as well as reward the savages, Atkin locked up ten of them for some infraction and thereby created a turmoil so serious that Washington had to act quickly to placate the offended natives before they set out in wrath for their own country.
While doing what he could to counteract the mistakes of Atkin, the Colonel had the doleful duty of relieving of command one of his earliest officers. Captain Hog had failed to maintain discipline and to build economically a properly situated fort at Vause’s. There was no alternative to getting rid of him. After Hog was sent home, the supervision of the southern end of the western defences was placed in the competent hands of Lewis. Some shifts were made, also, in the disposition of the detached companies, but the greatest change was the absence of Stephen in South Carolina. Frontier garrison duty had not carried him, as it had Hog, in a descent to incompetence; but where Stephen was, trouble was. His acceptance of Dagworthy’s seniority never had been explained, though Stephen’s letters often contained sharp criticisms of the Marylander. It was against Stephen, however unjustly, that some of the charges of drunkenness and immorality at Fort Cumberland had been directed. He had been loyal to Washington, but Washington found, after resuming command of all his troops, that Stephen so often had given orders contrary to those he had received that, said Washington, “it will be with great difficulty, if it is even possible, to extricate the officers and myself from the dilemma and trouble they have occasioned.”
These occurrences were incidental to the main task, rebuilding the Virginia Regiment in conformity to the new legislation of the General Assembly. The bill that finally met with the Burgesses’ approval authorized a total force of 1272, organized into twelve companies. Two of those to be recruited, in addition to two already in existence, could be dispatched to South Carolina if the commanding officer of His Majesty’s forces in North America thought necessary. One company was to garrison the fort in the Cherokee country; the remaining seven were to be employed for the general defence of the Colony. Furthermore, three companies of rangers, each of one hundred men, were to be enlisted for the protection of the southwestern counties.
A regimental roster continuously below authorized strength represented the principal failure of an exasperating year on the defensive. Washington did not blame himself for this weakness, nor did his superiors charge him with it. Washington had distress, also, over Captain Spotswood and his scouts, soldiers who by now had been given up as lost after their failure to return from their raid towards Logstown. Another distress was over the continuing slow progress of work on Fort Loudoun. Overtopping all the unhappiness of the service was the feeling of Washington that he had been treated unfairly by the Governor, that he and his officers had been maligned, and that they had been denied the right they believed they had earned of inclusion in the regular establishment.
Such were the events of the early summer of 1757; such the balance of satisfaction and disappointment, of compensation and distress—the Regiment still below strength, Spotswood dead, Stephen agreeably dispatched to South Carolina, Fort Loudoun taking shape slowly, Dagworthy somewhat discredited, Dinwiddie still quick to argue, but sick, anxious, and soon to pass off the stage. Washington himself was depressed and perhaps bored, but he was not disheartened. Pride, anticipation and experience were echoed in a letter of instruction he wrote the Captains who were about to take their companies to the more remote forts. “. . . devote some part of your leisure hours to the study of your profession, a knowledge in which cannot be attained without application; nor any merit or applause to be achieved without a certain knowledge thereof. Discipline is the soul of an army.”
Before one perplexity vanished another mocked. About August 1 George developed a mild dysentery, which he ignored to the extent that he did not reduce his activities in the least. Among compelling personal duties was that of going to Alexandria for another attempt at a settlement of Lawrence’s estate. He set out on August 4 and, on arrival, foun
d few questions to be discussed. The books were in order. When all the adjustments with Lee had been made there was no credit to Washington to offset the debts of £125 12s. 9d. contracted in 1753-55 and represented by purchases from the estate. This sum he duly paid. A fine crop of tobacco was growing on the land and was especially encouraging because Washington had decided that he would undertake to raise the best leaf in considerable quantities. From his salary and allowances he had saved money with which he soon was to buy five hundred additional acres on Dogue Run for £350, and he had invested £300 in additional slaves from November 1756 through May 1757. Thus would he have more “hands” for more work. Nothing specific could be undertaken immediately for the repair and furnishing of Mount Vernon, but much had to be pondered and planned, doubtless with the assistance of Jack Washington and his young wife. All business was completed as far as it could be by the beginning of the last week in August, when Washington went back to Winchester.
Washington had not made more than his initial approach to the perplexities usual to his life at that place when a messenger brought sad news: On September 3 death had taken Colonel Fairfax, the man who had done more than any other to counsel and advance young George Washington. Fairfax had transferred to George the moral assistance he first had given to Lawrence. He could not have been kinder to the son-in-law than to the dead man’s younger brother. From Fairfax George had learned more of the arts of society than from any other person except Lawrence. It was, therefore, as much a personal duty as it was a neighborly obligation to ride over the mountain to Colonel Fairfax’s formal funeral later in the month, even though the continuance of the bloody flux made the journey difficult and painful.
When the last tribute had been paid to Fairfax, Washington hurried back to the Valley. Those days between the news of the Colonel’s death and the time of the obsequies had been among the unhappiest of Washington’s whole period of command. About September 14 he received a letter written by William Peachey, one of the captains of the Regiment who had been discharged when the number of officers had been reduced. Peachey described with great particularity how Charles Carter had quoted William Claiborne as saying Richard Corbin had quoted Peachey as affirming in the spring of 1756, when sent to Williamsburg for aid, “that the whole business at that time was to execute a scheme of [Washington’s] to cause the Assembly to levy largely both in money and men, and that there was not an Indian in that neighborhood, that the frontiers or even Winchester and the adjacent county did not appear to be in any more danger at that time than any other. . . .” Peachey reported that this “piece of deceit or imposition of yours (as they term it) has lessened the Governor’s and some of the leading men’s esteem for you.”
In Washington’s eyes few things could be so calamitous to him as to lose the good opinion of the outstanding men of the Colony. He was conscious that he had lost favor with Dinwiddie, and he was inclined to believe that Corbin had spoken as Claiborne and Carter had reported. For this reason he wanted to know, first of all, whether the Governor had heard the accusation and knew its source. On the seventeenth George copied in a letter to Dinwiddie what Peachey had written and then asked: “I should take it infinitely kind if your Honor would please to inform me whether a report of this nature was ever made to you, and, in that case, who was the author of it?” With characteristic candor he admitted that he might have made military mistakes through lack of experience. “I think it would be more generous,” he said, “to charge me with my faults, and let me stand or fall according to the evidence, than to stigmatize me behind my back.”
Now returned from Fairfax’s funeral, Washington wrestled over the meaning of Governor Dinwiddie’s reply to this letter. The Governor said: “I would gladly hope there is no truth in it. I never heard of it before, nor did I ever conceive you’d have sent down any alarms without proper foundation. However, I shall show it to Col. Corbin when he comes to town, but I’d advise you not to credit every idle story you hear, for if I was to notice reports of different kinds, I should be constantly perplexed. My conduct to you from the beginning was always friendly, but you know I had good reason to suspect you of ingratitude, which I am convinced your own conscience and reflection must allow I had reason to be angry, but this I endeavor to forget; but I can’t think Col. Corbin guilty of what is reported. However as I’ve his Majesty’s leave to go for England, [I] propose leaving this November, and I wish my successor may show you as much friendship as I’ve done.”
This letter caused Washington as much pain as it relieved. George answered almost despairingly: “I do not know that I ever gave your Honor cause to suspect me of ingratitude, a crime I detest and would most carefully avoid. If an open, disinterested behavior carries offence, I may have offended, because I have always laid it down as a maxim to represent facts freely and impartially, but no more to others than I have to you, sir. If instances of my ungrateful behavior had been particularized, I would have answered to them. But I have long been convinced that my actions and their motives have been maliciously aggravated.”
There the matter had unhappily to rest, but if Dinwiddie soon was to leave, Washington felt it was desirable to go to Williamsburg and to settle accounts. The Colonel asked permission to do this, but the Governor snappishly met his request with a refusal. Rebuffed, George had to await a more favorable time, when the Governor’s humor was better or his successor had come. How soon that might be, George could not guess. He certainly did not anticipate the reality—that he had written the last words he ever was to address to “His Honor.” It was to be regretted that the last months of Dinwiddie’s relations with Washington were clouded with misunderstanding, after almost four years of pleasant association. Part of the final ill-feeling perhaps had its origin in Dinwiddie’s illness that shook his judgment and his temper. Had he recovered, he might have been reconciled.
At the same time, a certain complaint and contention ran through Washington’s letters of the summer of 1757 and for the same reason that Dinwiddie was bad-tempered: he was sick. The dysentery persisted relentlessly and reduced his strength day by day. About November 1 this bloody flux became more violent. Soon George was so weak that he scarcely could walk. On the seventh he was in such violent pain that the physicians had to give him warning: If he did not suspend all activity and seek a “change of air,” they could not be responsible for him; and even if he went away, he could not hope for early recovery. That decided him. Without attempting to write either Dinwiddie or Colonel Stanwix, he turned over the command to Captain Stewart, instructed that officer to notify his superiors of his illness and started for Alexandria.
On arrival in Alexandria, Colonel Washington went to the home of John Carlyle and there he remained long enough to consult Dr. Charles Green. For a time, the patient grew worse; then, after he went to Mount Vernon, he gained slightly in his battle with his malady. At Christmas, he was strong enough to transact some personal business, and subsequent to New Year’s Day he talked of going to Williamsburg, though at least one friendly neighbor discouraged the effort.
Neither pride nor physic, neither resilience nor resolution sufficed to break the grip of Washington’s affliction. The bloody flux ceased, only to return again. Some indications of “decay,” as the Colonials termed consumption, were apparent. With the coming of March, Washington grew desperate. Temporarily he would put himself under a strict regimen; when he had done his utmost, he would go to Williamsburg and consult the best physicians there. “. . . My constitution is certainly greatly impaired,” he told Colonel Stanwix. It might be necessary for him not only to resign but also, as he put it, to “retire from all public business.”
Painfully he set out March 5, 1758, and, in contrast to his usual galloping speed, rode slowly southward. He reached Williamsburg and consulted Dr. John Amson. This physician’s long experience apparently convinced him that George’s fears were unfounded and that cure was near. Assurance to this effect had immediate result. Washington almost overnight cast off thought of death and
proceeded to a new reconnaissance. He rode from Williamsburg to the White House, home of Martha Dandridge Custis, widow of Daniel Parke Custis.
CHAPTER / 5
In a society so small and so intimate as that of the great planters of eastern Virginia, Colonel Washington probably had known the young widow Custis during her married life, and he could not have been ignorant of some of the good fortune and of the bad that had fallen to the Custises and to the Parkes during the century and more of their residence in Virginia.
In 1749 Daniel Parke Custis fell in love with Martha Dandridge, aged eighteen, daughter of John and Frances Jones Dandridge of New Kent. Martha Dandridge was one of the fairest and most amiable girls of her society but by no means one of the wealthiest. Daniel Custis in due time married Martha, took her to the White House plantation on the Pamunkey River and there led with her a happy and opulent life. After the death of his father in 1749 Daniel Parke Custis, the heir of Parkes and Custises, held no less than 17,438 acres on modest quit rents, and he undertook to raise superior tobacco and to bundle and prize it with care. He operated fisheries; he drained his marshes and leased swamp land for the run of horses; he rented farms to tenants and he shared crops. Custis never became a Burgess but he had another of the usual honors of a great planter, that of being a warden of his parish, with which Parkes and Custises and Dandridges had all been connected. Good looks he set off with fine clothes from a Williamsburg tailor and with furnishings from London, where Martha bought freely of the market’s best ribbons and laces and silks and stomachers. Besides fine horses, Custis kept a chair and a chariot and visited often in Williamsburg.
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