Washington

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  Neither Forbes nor Bouquet was committed irrevocably, though they tentatively had decided on the route from Raystown. This line of advance had been recommended to them by responsible men in Philadelphia. The commanders had no reason to suppose they had been misled by self-interest. The matter seemed so completely one of wise choice that Forbes and Bouquet were puzzled by the vehemence of the Virginian’s insistence on the use of Braddock’s road. Washington, in the judgment of his superiors, minimized the obstacles which had balked Braddock many times in 1755.

  Because of the stand taken by Washington, Byrd and other men from south of the Potomac, Bouquet reviewed the choice of the Raystown approach and collected such additional information as he could concerning the relative advantages of the two routes. In summarizing the reports for Forbes, he took pains to say of the most conspicuous dissenter: “Colonel Washington is filled with a sincere zeal for the success of the expedition and will march wherever you determine with the same activity. He is sure that, with all the information he can gather, the route we have chosen is the most impracticable for horses; that the mountains are bad and that Braddock’s Road is the only one to take.” At the end of July Bouquet arranged a conference with the Colonel in the hope, as he phrased it, “that we might all centre in one and the same opinion.” Washington went to the meeting resolved to urge speed and to get leave “to advance on with the Virginians to the crossing [of the Youghiogheny] at least, opening the road and constructing posts as we go.” All this and more he told Bouquet July 30—and all without convincing his superior.

  Washington was profoundly disappointed. He went back to Fort Cumberland and wrote out his arguments in full for Bouquet, who had asked for such a paper in order that it might be placed before the General. Then Washington did a dangerous thing. He believed that Bouquet was the special advocate of the Raystown route, and that Forbes probably was being deceived regarding it. As it happened, Francis Halkett, a comrade of Braddock’s army, was Brigade Major of the British forces in Pennsylvania and often was acting secretary to the commander. Washington reasoned that if he explained the situation to Halkett, that officer might pass the information to the General. Without going over the head of Bouquet, it might be possible to appeal to Forbes in a matter concerning which Washington was convinced he was correct. The Virginian accordingly addressed a letter to Halkett the day he completed the long argument he intended to send Bouquet.

  Three days later, and before his letter could reach Halkett, word came to Washington from Bouquet that the choice of the General was for the route directly from Raystown. Virginia’s spokesman replied with dignity and with just a touch of stiffness that he would obey orders, but that he was of the same opinion still. This was by no means the end of it. Washington did more than adhere to his opinion. He continued to argue for advance along the old road, and he kept predicting calamity from the attempt to cut a new one during the brief remaining period of open weather. Within a few days he was on the black books of the commanding General. Forbes came accidentally upon Washington’s letter to Halkett, read it and felt that it explained the source of the Virginians’ opposition to the Raystown route. On the strength of this disclosure, Forbes began to build up a distrust of the author of the communication.

  Even this neither changed Washington’s opinion nor silenced him. Both he and Colonel Byrd had written Virginia’s new Governor, Francis Fauquier, that they did not expect large results from the advance in Pennsylvania. Fauquier replied that it might be too late to prevent the attempt to build the Raystown road but that he hoped Washington and Byrd would explain to their commanding officers that Virginia’s enlistment of troops and her supply of money had been based on the belief that a decisive effort would be made in 1758 to take Fort DuQuesne. Those officers needed no urging. The trial of their judgment was under way.

  Bouquet’s men cut the road to the top of the Allegheny Mountains, got the first division of the artillery over the crest and started work on the crossing of Laurel Hill. Beyond that barrier was the settlement of Loyal Hannon, which Bouquet intended to make his advanced base. General Forbes directed that Washington proceed westward from Fort Cumberland by the old road. These instructions were a triumph for the Virginian. He immediately wrote Bouquet a letter in which he told of the orders from Forbes, described the good prospect ahead and concluded with an expression of hope that Bouquet’s advance from Raystown would be successful. At the same time, Washington did not believe the army should move west in two columns. He wanted everything concentrated on Braddock’s road for an immediate start and continued his criticism of the new route and the delay in getting the troops on the march.

  There were many troubles and some hopes at Forbes’s Headquarters, which had been moved on August 12 from Carlisle to Shippensburg. The General was struggling with the bloody flux and was better one day and worse the next. Forbes was having difficulty with Sir John St. Clair. St. Clair on his own account got into an altercation with Adam Stephen and called the Virginians “mutineers.” Forbes was conscious that delay on his part was provoking comment. It was due primarily, he insisted, to the “horrible roguery and rascality” of the farmers who did not supply promised vehicles and teams. As the passing of September reduced steadily the time during which the army could hope to advance on Fort DuQuesne, every new difficulty was a test of the nerves of the commanders. A rain appeared to be a calamity, a day of warm sunshine an occasion of rejoicing.

  Such was the situation when Washington had the long-desired opportunity of a personal conference with Forbes at Raystown. There, on September 16, he received one clear order from his commander: He was to return to Fort Cumberland and move thence as promptly as possible to Raystown with his own and Byrd’s troops. This put an end to Washington’s hope of an advance on Braddock’s road—but it meant participation, which Washington had been craving. He and Byrd and their officers were to rejoin the advanced contingents and mingle with the largest armed force Washington ever had seen. Soon after they reached Raystown, Stephen informed the Virginia Colonels he had been told by everyone that the road from Loyal Hannon to Fort DuQuesne was impracticable. One of the Virginians passed this information to Forbes, who took advantage of the occasion to speak his mind to Washington and to Byrd. The General felt they actually would be glad, rather than sorry, that the new route could not be used, because they had so predicted. Forbes’s was a stern rebuke and it was not without warrant.

  Washington had news on September 20 or 21 of a strange and costly misadventure. Maj. James Grant of the Seventy-seventh Regiment had gone over the Allegheny Mountains and Laurel Hill and, with his troops, had joined Colonel Bouquet at Loyal Hannon. Bouquet had abundant force to beat off any surprise attack, but he was harassed by small bands of Indians who lurked around his camp, picked up stragglers and fired almost daily at men sent to care for the horses in nearby woods. About the time of Grant’s arrival, Bouquet had decided to send out a number of detachments to scour the country and, if possible, waylay the French Indians and recover the prisoners that had been carried off. Grant disapproved this. If Bouquet would give him five hundred men, Grant stated, he would make a secret march to Fort DuQuesne, ascertain conditions there and, if circumstance favored him, make a night attack on the Indians supposed to be camped around the fort. Bouquet demurred. Grant pressed tenaciously, and at length Bouquet yielded, but he cautiously increased to about 750 the number of troops, exclusive of Indians, whom Grant was to take. Only when all the decisions had been made by Bouquet did he call in the officers who knew more about woodland warfare—James Burd, who commanded the Pennsylvanians, and Andrew Lewis, in charge of the advanced companies of Washington’s Regiment. Lewis’s experience warned him against the dispatch of so small a force as 750 white men, with a few native scouts, to reconnoitre close to the French fort and at so considerable a distance from his own base. These objections being overruled, Lewis was ready to obey orders but he was insistent that it be remembered he had not approved the plan.

  Off
, then, the column moved September 9—300 Highlanders of the Seventy-seventh, 100 men of the new Royal American Regiment, about 175 of the First Virginia, 100 Pennsylvanians, 100 Marylanders, and a mixed Indian contingent of Nottaways, Tuscaroras and Catawbas. No opposition was encountered anywhere along the line of march. At 3 P.M. on the twelfth Grant was on what appeared to him to be advantageous ground, at a distance, according to his guides, of ten or twelve miles from Fort DuQuesne. There he halted, made preparations for the final stage of his advance and at length shaped his plan to conform approximately to his orders from Bouquet, which were to this effect: He was to reconnoitre the route from Loyal Hannon to Fort DuQuesne and procure information concerning the garrison, the condition of the French defences and the number of Indians at hand. If he succeeded in reaching the vicinity of the fort without being detected, he would be free to occupy the adjacent hill and open fire on the Indians camped outside the parapet. In the event he discovered the savages huddled around their fires after dark, he was authorized to have a detachment put on white shirts over their jackets and proceed to attack the Indians shortly after midnight. For the successful execution of this strange plan, Grant had to preserve the maximum possible secrecy during the final stage of his advance and regulate his march in such a manner that he would approach the fort after dark but with adequate information concerning the ground.

  By 11 P.M. of September 13 Grant reached the hill a few hundred yards from the fort and there he assembled 750 men or more almost within rifle-range of the French. So far as he knew, he still enjoyed all the advantage of surprise. How best to utilize that advantage, when he manifestly could not capture the fort by regular approaches, was the question Grant had to answer. Few Indian fires were around the fort; this might indicate merely that the fires had burned out; or it might be a warning that the natives had learned of the approach of the English and had withdrawn into the fort.

  Grant sent for Lewis and explained that the absence of Indian fires prevented the execution of the original plan. It still would be possible, he said, to remain a day in front of the fort without being discovered. The utmost should be made of that opportunity, and at once. Lewis must take two hundred provincials and two hundred Highlanders and “attack anything that was found about the fort.” In spite of the midnight blackness, Grant felt absolute confidence that these orders could be obeyed. The troops had on the prescribed white shirts and could distinguish one another a short distance apart; they did not have far to move; four hundred seemed a sufficient number to deal with all adversaries who might be found outside the fort.

  After the attacking force started down the hill Grant disposed the other troops. Minutes passed. No sound of rifles came from the vicinity of the fort; no fires flared. Grant did not know what had happened to muffle or engulf his attack. After a time of nervous waiting, Lewis came out of the darkness. It was impossible to proceed, he said; the road was bad, logs blocked it, the men were bewildered. They might fire into their own divided ranks and might not find their way back. Grant hurried down from the hill to see conditions for himself. “I found the troops,” he said later, “in the greatest confusion I ever saw men in, which in truth was not surprising for the Major had brought them back from the plain when he returned himself, and every man took a road of their own.” It was too late, Grant said in his official report, to attempt to re-form Lewis’s command or move forward the men who had been left on the hill. All he could do was to move forward a detachment of fifty men towards the place where on arrival during the night he had seen two or three fires burning.

  This was attempted, but no Indian camps were found. The detachment had to content itself with setting afire one of the storehouses, where the flames soon were extinguished. About the time this party was mounting the hill again, in foggy dawn, Grant sent Lewis back with 250 men to the point, two miles from the front, where Capt. Thomas Bullett had been left with the baggage.

  Now, with about 550 men at his command, Grant shifted some of his Highlanders to the left and put Pennsylvanians on his right. Soon, when he learned that the position of the detachment on the left had been discovered by Indians, Grant directed his drums to beat the reveille. He noted later: “I must own I thought we had nothing to fear,” but disillusionment was immediate. Out from the fort poured the French garrison, with their Indian allies in front. Small parties, working together, scattered among the trees, fired, loaded again and then dashed forward to new shelter. The Highlanders’ officers, imprudently exposed, were shot down at once. Startled soldiers became bewildered and broke.

  As soon as the swelling sound of the fire made it clear that Grant was attacked and being compelled to give ground, Lewis yielded to the pleas of his officers and men that he go to the rescue. He pushed forward but could not establish contact with Grant, whose men now were scattered and in hopeless confusion.

  A few minutes more and the situation was beyond repair. Panic gripped the men who had received the first attack. Even Lewis’s veterans of forest warfare did not linger behind their trees for many shots at the enemy. Soon the survivors were flocking back to the baggage and to the guard under Captain Bullett. That officer did not wait for refugees and pursuing French and Indians to engulf him. Although he could count only his fifty rifles, he attacked as furiously as if he had a regiment. The fast and determined fire of this contingent made the enemy hesitate long enough for the surviving Highlanders and Colonials to escape. Bullett’s Virginians continued to load and fire, but they were too few to turn a bad retreat into a drawn battle. Then Bullett’s men, too, stubbornly and reluctantly withdrew. The enemy did not pursue far. Losses were severe for the force engaged. A subsequent list covered twenty-two officers and 278 men killed. The Virginians slain in Washington’s Regiment numbered sixty-two.

  Disgust was general. Forbes was sure “no man [could] justify” the affair, which he attributed primarily to Grant’s acceptance of the story that the French forces at Fort DuQuesne were small. At Headquarters, there was no disposition to shield Grant or deny the Colonials full credit for what they had done to prevent a worse defeat, but there was not at Raystown a touch of the despair that prevailed at Fort Cumberland after the surrender of Fort Necessity or after the disaster to Braddock. The loss was not considered serious enough to weaken materially a force that believed itself definitely superior. In Forbes’s mind, the only foe that could stop the British advance was continued bad weather. Washington was convinced that the operation was poorly planned and was out of sympathy with the direction of the whole enterprise. He echoed his old complaint: “. . . I see no probability of opening the road this campaign: How then can we expect a favorable issue to the expedition?” He was not reconciled or even mollified when General Forbes publicly complimented him on the behavior of the Virginians in Grant’s fight.

  Forbes daily was issuing prudent directions of instructional value to a young officer who never had operated with so large a body of men as Forbes had under his command. There were lessons, also, in such matters as Forbes’s arrangements for putting the army in condition to move on an hour’s notice. Equally informative was the General’s careful explanation of the manner in which soldiers were to get themselves and their arms in order after exposure to a heavy rain. As one of these well-fashioned orders followed another, Washington did not disdain them; he read them carefully and compared them with his own experience. Disappointed though he was, he was not disgruntled. He still differed from his chief, but he did not sulk.

  While Forbes, resolute, though now too sick to ride a horse, battled with nearly all the usual perplexities of the field and with some that were exceptional, the French became active. “Having a mind,” in Forbes’s words, “to repay Major Grant’s visit,” the enemy sent a column against Loyal Hannon. Its approach was discovered on the morning of the twelfth by the firing of twelve guns southwest of the camp. The French boldly approached and opened a hot fire, but they did not make a direct assault. After about two hours they withdrew with many stolen horses—on
ly to return that night. Discouraged then, they disappeared. Forbes was disappointed that the French were not pursued, but he wrote cheerfully, “I fancy they will not visit soon again.”

  It was now his turn, his last chance of 1758. In the knowledge that he had left only a brief period in which to strike at Fort DuQuesne, Forbes strained every man, horse and wheel in an effort to get close enough to deliver a swift and sudden blow. All troops were to be held in readiness for advance at the beat of the drum.

  The road over Laurel Hill made Bouquet and Forbes wonder if, after all, they possibly could win the race with winter. As in the struggle with the Allegheny Mountains, the odds changed almost daily. Forbes had been told that October and November were the best months for a campaign because it then was possible to see a little way through the woods and thereby avoid surprises. Instead, he found the season forbidding, but every day that the weather permitted, Forbes pushed his men forward and at length, on October 23, he advanced Washington to Loyal Hannon.

  A brave, unusual achievement now lighted the darkness of the rainy autumn and strengthened the heart of Forbes. He had been mindful of the dangers he would face on the way to Fort DuQuesne if the Indians were his enemy and he had been unwilling to acquiesce in the conclusion of some of the Colonial leaders that the Indians of the Ohio country were now bound permanently to France. Forbes believed the Indians could be brought to see that Britain would win the war and that it was to their interest to be on the winning side. He had undertaken to induce the government of Pennsylvania to negotiate for peace with France’s savage allies. Partly because of Forbes’s persistence, Gov. William Denny and the Council of Pennsylvania had asked Fredrich Post to make a journey to the Ohio and invite the Indians to renew their old treaties with England. Post was a Polish lay missionary of the Moravian sect Unitas Fratrum and for sixteen years had been laboring among Indians in whose language he had acquired proficiency. He left Philadelphia July 15 and went to Fort DuQuesne. In spite of French machinations and the treachery of one of his companions, Post displayed so much courage, honesty and simple address that the Indians agreed to make peace if all the Colonial Governors would join in it. With this assurance and the promise of some of the Indians to attend a conference at Easton, Pennsylvania, Post succeeded in getting to Fort Augusta September 22.