George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  11. From Dinwiddie, 15 March 1754, GWP; Hall, Executive Journals 5:463–65 (14 March and 11 April 1754).

  12. Narrative of Expedition to the Ohio, 1754, 19–20 April 1754, GWP; to Dinwiddie, 25 April 1754, GWP; McGregor, “The Shot Not Heard Round the World,” 366–68; Kent, “The French Occupy the Ohio Country,” Pennsylvania Hist. 21:313 (October 1954). As reproduced in his April 25 letter to Governor Dinwiddie, Washington’s message to Tanaghrisson was signed “George Washington also Connotaucarious.” Thirty years later, Washington explained this signature as reflecting the Indian honorific “Connotaucarious” that Tanaghrisson had bestowed upon him because it had been borne by Washington’s great-grandfather, the immigrant John Washington, in the previous century. As Washington related it, the name “registered in their [the Indians’] Manner and communicated to other Nations of Indians, has been remembered by them ever since in all their transactions with him during the late war [the American Revolution].” Zagarri, Humphreys, 10. The name translates as “town-taker” or “town-destroyer.” This name has proved one of the small puzzles of Washington’s life. The notion is preposterous that Tanaghrisson—a Seneca, or Mingo, or Catawba Indian—would know four generations later a name that had been applied to Washington’s great-grandfather by the Susquehannocks of Maryland, and also would know that George was his descendant. At the very least, such knowledge would require John Washington to have been a titanic figure in the history of the Indians of eastern North America, a proposition unsupported by any evidence. Washington seems to have been untroubled by any negative connotations of the name. “Town-destroyer” is a term for an enemy, not a friend, yet Washington used the name in Indian-related correspondence on a second occasion, as well. To Andrew Montour, 10 October 1755, GWP. One scholar suggests that Washington “remembered the name from family lore and took it for himself, a young man’s act of bravado,” observing that, “Despite its hostile connotations, Washington took pride in the name.” He also notes that the explanation offered by Washington came in the 1780s, after the Revolutionary War, when Iroquois Indians had called him “town-destroyer,” a term the American forces richly earned during that conflict. Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington, 69–70.

  13. Dinwiddie to Colonel James Innes, 23 March 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:125–26; Hall, Executive Journals 5:465 (11 April 1754) and 5:468 (4 May 1754). Inexplicably, the Executive Council applauded Washington’s “caution” in stopping at Redstone Creek and waiting for reinforcements before moving on to the Monongahela. Hall, Executive Journals 5:468–69 (4 May 1754). In an equally doubtful move, Washington wrote directly to the governors of Pennsylvania and Maryland—neither of whom he had ever met—to alert them that the French had taken the Forks. Though no malicious purpose seems to have motivated those letters, they reflect an exaggerated idea of his position. To James Hamilton, 24 April 1754, GWP; to Horatio Sharpe, 24 April 1754, GWP.

  14. To Dinwiddie, 9 and 18 May 1754, GWP; to Joshua Fry, 23 May 1754, GWP. Washington took some satisfaction that the French built their new fort at the Forks at the site he had singled out as best for a fortification. Dinwiddie to Colonel Joshua Fry, 4 May 1754, Dinwiddie to Lord Holderness, 10 May 1754, Dinwiddie to the Lords of Trade, 10 May 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:146–48, 1:158, 1:162. Although Captain Mackay’s company is ordinarily referred to as a South Carolina unit, he was a Georgian and some evidence suggests that the soldiers in the company were Georgians too. William Harden, “James Mackay of Strathy Hall, Comrade in Arms of George Washington,” Georgia Hist. Q. 1:77, 82–83 (1917).

  15. To Dinwiddie, 18 May 1754, GWP.

  16. From Dinwiddie, 25 May 1754, GWP.

  17. To Dinwiddie, 27 May 1754, GWP; Hall, Executive Journals 5: 469–70 (7 May 1754).

  7: BLOODED

  1. To Dinwiddie, 29 May 1754, GWP.

  2. To Dinwiddie, 27 May 1754, GWP.

  3. Marcel Trudel and Donald H. Kent, “The Jumonville Affair,” Pennsylvania Hist. 21:351, 369–70 (October 1954); Pennsylvania Gazette, September 19, 1754. A recently discovered British source records an account from an unnamed Indian who claimed that Washington fired the first shot in the skirmish, and that British friendly fire had killed the fallen Virginian. The Indian source also confirmed Washington’s account that the French returned fire. David Preston, “When Young George Washington Started a War,” Smithsonian Magazine (October 2019).

  4. Dixon, “A High Wind Rising,” 74:333, 344; Journal of Chaussegros de Léry 1754–55, Erie: Pennsylvania Historical Commission (December 1939), 19, 28 (19 June, 7 July 1754); Anderson, Crucible of War, 5; to Dinwiddie, 29 May 1754, GWP; Anderson, Crucible of War, 58–59; to Dinwiddie, 29 May 1754, GWP; “Expedition to the Ohio, 1754: Narrative,” 27 May 1754, GWP; to Dinwiddie, 3 June 1754, GWP. One official French government statement on the encounter can be partly reconciled with the account in text, as it describes a skirmish with guns blazing, then a pause when the French presumably laid down their weapons, and then Jumonville being killed. Moreau, A Memorial, 22–23. Another element of the French account, however, cannot be squared with the Virginia version: that Jumonville was killed by a musket shot and that the Indians rushed in to restrain the Virginians from massacring the French survivors. Those assertions are most implausible. Moreau, Memorial, 69.

  5. Orders from M. de Contrecoeur to Jumonville, 23 May 1754, in Moreau, Memorial, 67–68.

  6. To Dinwiddie, 29 May 1754, GWP.

  7. Monsieur Druillon to Dinwiddie, 17 June 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:225–26; the specifics in Washington’s account were confirmed by the recently unearthed British record of an Indian witness. Preston, “When Young George Washington Started a War,” supra.

  8. Trudel and Kent, “The Jumonville Affair,” 21:351, 21:361–65. As one scholar summarized Jumonville’s mission, he “was undoubtedly sent both to gather military intelligence and to deliver the declaration. Such a dual mission was not uncommon, but it was normally carried out as openly as possible and with fewer than a dozen soldiers and scouts.” Daniel A. Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 1754–1763, Harlow: Longman (2011), 63.

  9. William Coxe, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second, London: Henry Colburn (1847), 1:400; Flexner 1:89.

  10. Pennsylvania Gazette, July 11, 1754; to Dinwiddie, 3 June 1754, GWP. For other reports of Washington’s situation and activities on the frontier, see Boston Post-Boy, July 1, 1754; Boston Gazette, July 2, 1754; Maryland Gazette, July 4, 1754; Pennsylvania Gazette, July 4, 1754.

  11. From Dinwiddie, 1 June 1754, GWP; to Dinwiddie, 10 June 1754, GWP; Dinwiddie to Fry, 29 May 1754, Dinwiddie to John Carlyle, 25 June 1754, Dinwiddie to Colonel Fairfax, 27 June 1754, Dinwiddie to Gov. Hamilton of Pennsylvania, 18 June 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:184–85, 1:219–20, 1:224, 1:214–16; from Dinwiddie, 1 June 1754, GWP. The New York companies arrived in Alexandria by ship on June 24, far too late to assist at Fort Necessity. From Bryan Fairfax, 24 June 1754, GWP.

  12. From Dinwiddie, 4 June 1754, GWP; to Dinwiddie, 10 June 1754, GWP.

  13. Expedition to the Ohio, Narrative, 1 June 1754, GWP; to Dinwiddie, 3 June 1754, GWP.

  14. From Dinwiddie, 4 June 1754, GWP; to Dinwiddie, 10 June 1754, GWP; from Dinwiddie, 27 June 1754, GWP; Expedition to the Ohio, Narrative, 1 June, GWP (entries for 23 April and 15 June); Freeman, 1:400.

  15. Titus, The Old Dominion at War, 53; “Affidavit of John Shaw,” in William L. McDowell Jr., ed., Colonial Records of South Carolina: Documents Relating to Indian Affairs, 1754–1765, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press (1970), 3–7 (cited as “John Shaw Affidavit”); Minutes of a Council of War, 28 June 1754, GWP.

  16. Lengel, General George Washington, 41; Expedition to the Ohio, Narrative, 1 June 1754, GWP (entries for 17 and 24 May and 5 and 12 June 1754).

  17. Expedition to the Ohio (entries for 15, 18–21, and 27 June 1754).

  18. From Dinwiddie, 27 June 1754, GWP; Minutes of a Council
of War, 28 June 1754, GWP; Frederick Tilberg, “Washington’s Stockade at Fort Necessity,” Pennsylvania Hist. 20:240, 245 (July 1953); Ward, Adam Stephen, 10.

  19. Paul A. Wallace, Conrad Weiser, Friend of Colonist and Mohawk, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1945), 367 (3 September 1754); Anderson, Crucible of War, 59; Dixon, “A High Wind Rising,” 74:345; John Shaw Affidavit, 7.

  20. Journal of Chaussegros de Léry, 27 (7 July 1754); Dixon, “A High Wind Rising,” 74:346–47; Tilberg, “Washington’s Stockade,” 246; “Account by George Washington and James Mackay of the Capitulation of Fort Necessity,” 19 July 1754, GWP; John Shaw Affidavit, 5.

  21. “Journal of M. de Villiers,” in Moreau, Memorial, 178.

  22. Zagarri, Humphreys, 13; Anderson, Crucible of War, 64; John Shaw Affidavit, 5; Maryland Gazette, August 29, 1754; Ward, Adam Stephen, 11.

  23. Journal of Chaussegros de Léry, 36 (16 July 1754).

  24. Zagarri, Humphreys, 13; “Account by George Washington and James Mackay,” 19 July 1754, GWP.

  25. New York Mercury, August 26, 1754.

  26. Articles of Capitulation, 3 July 1754, GWP; Moreau, Memorial, 25–26, 182–83; Ward, Adam Stephen, 11–12. That the capitulation listed a second purpose for the French attack—to expel the English from the Ohio country—was lost to history.

  27. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 23; letter to unknown addressee, “III. 1757,” GWP.

  28. “Account by George Washington and James Mackay,” 19 July 1754, GWP; Virginia Gazette (Hunter), July 19, 1754; New York Mercury, July 29, 1754; Journal of Chaussegros de Léry, 36 (July 16, 1754); Anderson, Crucible of War, 65. Washington and Mackay’s dramatically inflated casualty estimate was accepted by some fellow Virginians. Jack P. Greene, ed., The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter of Sabine Hall, 1752–1778, Richmond: Virginia Historical Society (1987), 110 (22 August 1754).

  29. Wallace, Conrad Weiser, 387.

  30. Papers of William Johnson, Albany: State University of New York (1921), 1:409–10 (29 July 1754); Lord Albemarle to the Duke of Newcastle, quoted in Stuart Leibiger, “‘To Judge of Washington’s Conduct’: Illuminating George Washington’s Appearance on the World Stage,” VMHB 107:37, 43 (Winter 1999).

  31. From Colonel Fairfax, 11 July 1754, GWP.

  32. Dinwiddie to William Allen, Esq., 10 March 1755, Dinwiddie to Colonel Innes, 20 July 1755, Dinwiddie to James Abercromby, 24 July 1754, Dinwiddie to the Lords of Trade, 24 June 1754, Dinwiddie to Lord Halifax, 24 July 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:523–24, 1:232, 1:235–39, 1:239–43, 1:250–52; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1752–1755, 1756–1758, 198 (30 August 1754); from John Robinson, 15 September 1754, GWP. Landon Carter, a prominent member of the House of Burgesses, recorded in his diary that Dinwiddie had ordered Washington into an exposed position and Washington’s men “were totally neglected and left quite without provision.” Greene, The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter, 109 (22 August 1754).

  33. Lengel, General George Washington, 47.

  34. Mackay defended Washington’s handling of the capitulation, blaming the interpreter for the document’s unfortunate language. From James Mackay, 28 September 1754, GWP. That explanation—embraced by both Washington and Mackay—is not persuasive, since an interpreter would not be needed to understand the meaning of the French word for assassination (“assassinat”), which is instantly recognizable to English speakers as referring to assassination.

  8. PICKING UP THE PIECES

  1. To Colonel Innes, 12 August 1754, GWP; to Dinwiddie, 20 August 1754, GWP; Titus, The Old Dominion at War, 57; Dinwiddie to Colonel Innes, August 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:269–71; to Colonel Fairfax, 11 August 1754, GWP; from James Mackay, 27 August 1754, GWP. Because many deserters fled to neighboring Maryland, Washington ran the advertisements in the Annapolis-based Maryland Gazette on September 5, 12, 19, and 26, 1754.

  2. Dinwiddie to Colonel Innes, 1 August 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:261–62; from Dinwiddie, 1 August 1754, GWP; Dinwiddie to Governor Sharpe, 31 July 1754, Dinwiddie to Abercromby, 15 August 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:258–59, 1:284–87.

  3. To Colonel Fairfax, 11 August 1754, GWP.

  4. Dinwiddie to Colonel Innes, 18 September 1754, Dinwiddie to John Abercromby, 1 September 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:314–15, 1:298–301; from William La Peronie, 5 September 1754, GWP; Dinwiddie Order, 4 September 1754, Dinwiddie to Innes, 11 September 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:302–3, 1:314–15; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1752–1758, 8:204 (5 September 1754); from Colonel Fairfax, 5 September 1754, GWP; Titus, The Old Dominion at War, 57.

  5. Anderson, Crucible of War, 68, 77; Dinwiddie to Secretary Robinson, 23 September 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:322–27; from Dinwiddie, 11 September 1754, GWP; Dinwiddie to Lord Fairfax, September 10, 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:312–13.

  6. “The Plan of Military Operations,” October 1754, and Dinwiddie to Sir Thomas Robinson, 25 October 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:351–53; Titus, The Old Dominion at War, 59–60; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1752–1758, 8:222 (29 October 1754); Dinwiddie to Earl of Halifax, 25 October 1754, in Dinwiddie Records 1:366–69; Freeman 1:436–48.

  7. Ferling, The Ascent of George Washington, 26.

  8. To William Fitzhugh, 15 November 1754, GWP; see from William Fitzhugh, 4 November 1754, GWP.

  9. “Account with the Colony of Virginia,” October 1754, GWP; from Dinwiddie, 11 September 1754, GWP; Freeman 1:244; “Lease of Mount Vernon,” 17 December 1754, GWP; Knollenberg, George Washington: The Virginia Period, 26.

  10. “I. Memorandum,” and “II. Memorandum,” 10 December 1754, GWP.

  11. Invoice, 23 October 1754, GWP; Freeman 2:4–5; to Robert Orme, April 1755, GWP.

  12. Titus, The Old Dominion Goes to War, 58, 65; Anderson, Crucible of War, 88; McIlwaine, Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1752–1758, 8:231–32 (1 May 1755); Dinwiddie to Captain Stewart, 26 November 1754, Dinwiddie to Captains George Mercer, Waggener, and Stewart, 15 January 1755, in Dinwiddie Records 1:413–14, 1:461–62.

  13. Dinwiddie to Governor Sharpe, 2 January 1755, Dinwiddie to William Allen, 14 January 1755, in Dinwiddie Records 1:447–48, 1:455–56.

  14. Freeman 2:20; to Adam Stephen, 18 November 1755, GWP; to Robert Orme, 2 March, GWP, note 1; Frank A. Cassell, “The Braddock Expedition of 1755: Catastrophe in the Wilderness,” Pennsylvania Legacies 5:11 (May 2005); John Carlyle to George Carlyle, 15 August 1755, in Carlyle Correspondence; Titus, The Old Dominion Goes to War, 64.

  15. “Anonymous letter on Braddock’s Campaign,” 25 July 1755, reprinted in Stanley Pargellis, ed., Military Affairs in North America 1748–1765, New York: D. Appleton-Century Co. (1936), 119; Freeman 2:37; John Carlyle to George Carlyle, 15 August 1755, in Carlyle Correspondence.

  16. Franklin Thayer Nichols, “The Organization of Braddock’s Army,” WMQ, 4:125, 126, 139–40 (April 1947).

  17. To John Augustine Washington, 14 May 1755, GWP.

  18. From Orme, 2 March 1755, GWP; from Orme, 16 March 1755, GWP; to Orme, 2 April 1755, GWP; from Orme, 3 April 1755, GWP; “Sketch of Regulations & Orders Proposed Relating to Affairs of North America, November 1754,” in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 35; “Sketch of an Order About the Rank etc., of the Provincial Troops in North America,” in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 43; Koontz, Robert Dinwiddie, 327.

  19. To William Byrd, 20 April 1755, GWP; to John Robinson, 20 April 1755, GWP; to Carter Burwell, 20 April 1755, GWP; to Thomas, Lord Fairfax, 6 May 1755, GWP; Edward G. Lengel, First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity, Boston: Da Capo Press (2016), 31.

  20. To John Augustine Washington, 14 May 1755, GWP.

  21. Flexner 1:115–17; “Captain Orme’s Journal,” in Winthrop Sargent, The History of an Expedition Against Fort Du Quesne in 1755, under Major General Edward Braddock, Philadelphia: Li
ppincott, Grambo & Co. (1855), 281, 300; John Carlyle to George Carlyle, 15 August 1755, in Carlyle Correspondence; to William Fairfax, 23 April 1755, GWP; Virginia Gazette (Hunter), May 3, 1755.

  22. To John Augustine Washington, 6 May 1755, GWP; Letter of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, in Elaine G. Breslaw, “A Dismal Tragedy: Drs. Alexander and John Hamilton Comment on Braddock’s Defeat,” Maryland Hist. Magazine 75:118, 131 (1980); to Augustine Washington, 14 May 1755, GWP; to Mary Washington, 6 May 1755, GWP.

  23. Braddock to Robert Napier, 8 June 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 84; from Sir John St. Clair to Braddock, 9 February 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 64; “Captain Orme’s Journal,” 312; to John Augustine Washington, 28 May and 7 June 1755, GWP. The Virginians might take some solace in the universal condemnation of the independent companies when they finally arrived from New York. One British officer, who sent forty of the New Yorkers home, observed that they had “neither legs to get upon the heights nor to run away through the valleys.” Sir John St. Clair to Robert Napier, 10 February 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 65. Several of their soldiers, Captain Orme wrote, were “from sixty to seventy years of age, lame and everyway disabled.” Nichols, “The Organization of Braddock’s Army,” 127. Braddock dismissed the New York companies as “good for nothing.” Braddock to Robert Napier, 17 March 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 78.

  24. Flexner 1:119–20; James Thomas Flexner, Mohawk Baronet, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press (1959), 131; Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co. (1888), 181.

  25. Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 151; Beverly Bond, ed., “The Captivity of Charles Stuart, 1755–57,” Mississippi Hist. Rev. 13:63 (1926); Calloway, Shawnees, 28; Major General Edward Braddock’s Orderly Books, Cumberland, MD: Will H. Lowdermilk, 1878, xxxvi (May 18, 1755, holding “public Congress of Indians”); Anderson, Crucible of War, 94–95; Daniel Barr, “‘This Land Is Ours and Not Yours’: The Western Delawares and the Seven Years’ War in the Upper Ohio Valley, 1755–1758,” in Daniel Barr, ed., The Boundaries Between Us: Natives and Newcomers Along the Frontiers of the Old Northwest Territory, 1750–1850, Kent: The Kent State University Press (2006), 29–30; Cassell, “The Braddock Expedition of 1755,” 11.