Franklin & Washington

by Edward J. Larson

  “The confidence of the French in this Undertaking seems well grounded on the present disunited State of the British Colonies, and the extreme Difficulty of bringing so many different Governments and Assemblies to agree on any speedy and effectual Measures for our common Defense and Security,” Franklin declared. Beneath this appeal he printed the first original editorial cartoon in any American newspaper, and perhaps the most famous ever published. Presumably of his design, it showed a rattlesnake cut into pieces with the name of a colony on each severed part. “Join, or Die,” the caption read.12 Fittingly, he chose a native American species for the illustration, not an introduced European domestic animal. United, the image suggested, America could survive on its own.

  Franklin’s promotion of an intercolonial union received a boost later that year when, based on Washington’s prior report of French aggression, the Board of Trade in London directed the colonies to send commissioners to a congress in Albany, New York, to consider collective defensive action and to mend their military alliance with the Iroquois Confederacy. Instinctively viewing collective action as the way to solve social and political problems, Franklin had sketched out an idea for his intercolonial defensive union in a 1751 letter to James Parker, a New York printer. As Franklin then proposed it, this limited federal union, with proportional representation from the various colonies and a governor appointed by the king, would manage “every Thing relating to Indian Affairs and the Defence of the Colonies.” Using the Iroquois as an example, Franklin asked, “If six Nations of ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it,” why should a like union “be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous?”13

  Chosen as one of Pennsylvania’s commissioners to the Albany Congress, Franklin dusted off his earlier idea for this defensive union and drafted it into a formal proposal. Only seven middle and northern colonies sent commissioners to the congress, and most of these directed their delegates to focus on negotiations with the Iroquois. Nevertheless, working with Thomas Hutcheson of Massachusetts, Franklin persuaded the congress to appoint a committee to draw up a plan of union and then persuaded that committee to adopt his proposal. While each colony would retain authority over its internal affairs, a “General Government” with a president general appointed by the king and a grand council composed of representatives from the various colonies would control relations with Native Americans, settlement of the west, and defense of the coast and frontier. For these purposes, it could raise an army, launch a navy, make laws, and levy taxes.

  Although ahead of its time, the Albany Plan of Union contained seeds of the novel sort of federal government that Franklin would help to design three decades later at the Constitutional Convention. “Though he was sometimes dismissed as more a practitioner than a visionary,” biographer Walter Isaacson later wrote, “Franklin in Albany had helped to devise a federal concept—orderly, balanced, and enlightened—that would eventually form the basis for a unified American nation.”14 He never gave up on this vision. He carried it to the Constitutional Convention.

  While it was approved by the Albany Congress and passed on to the colonies and the British government for implementation, Franklin’s plan never had a chance. No colony was yet willing to relinquish its sovereignty over military affairs and the frontier. Parliament feared that any intercolonial union might lead toward independence.

  To gain British support for the Albany Plan, the royal governor of Massachusetts suggested that the king (rather than the colonial assemblies) choose the grand council much as he chose the upper house of some colonial legislatures. Again showing foresight, Franklin rejected this suggestion on principle. “It is suppos’d an undoubted Right of Englishmen not to be taxed but by their own Consent given thro’ their Representatives,” he declared in an early articulation of the revolutionary rallying cry: No taxation without representation.15

  “Its Fate was singular,” Franklin observed about the Albany Plan. “The Assemblies did not adopt it as they all thought there was too much Prerogative in it; and in England it was judg’d to have too much of the Democratic.”16 Franklin remained convinced that, if implemented, the plan would have sufficed to defend the colonies against the French, but instead Britain was forced to intervene at such great cost that it led to the taxes that touched off a revolution. “But such mistakes are not new,” Franklin later sighed. “History is full of the Errors of States and Princes.”17

  FOLLOWING THE FAILURE of Washington’s military assault and Franklin’s defensive union, Britain sent a fourteen-hundred-man army of crack British soldiers under the command of General Braddock—two infantry regiments of the Coldstream Guards—to drive the French from the Ohio Country. This was a far larger force than anything the French in Canada could muster and should have been more than sufficient to succeed. The Ohio Country had never seen such a sizable, trained, European army before; indeed, nothing like it had ever marched so far into the region’s interior. An imperious leader dismissive of colonists, Braddock assumed his army would continue past the Forks of the Ohio to Lake Ontario, rolling up a line of French forts on its way. For this purpose, it traveled with more than two dozen heavy siege cannons, howitzers, and mortars in addition to a long, cumbersome supply train. At the western end of Lake Ontario, Braddock’s force was to link up with a second one marching west from Albany, thus completing the conquest of the Ohio Country.

  Reaching Virginia in February 1755, Braddock met with Franklin, Washington, and other colonial officials over the next two months while finalizing his plan of attack. Pennsylvanians hoped that he would march on Fort Duquesne through their colony, which was the shortest way, while Virginians urged him to follow Washington’s route. The latter option would allow Braddock to take advantage of both Fort Cumberland, which Maryland had just built at the Wills Creek jumping-off point from the Potomac to the Monongahela River valley, and Washington’s crude road from that point to Great Meadows. The general used Washington’s route and recruited the Virginian to serve as an aide and guide. In his role as postmaster general for the colonies, Franklin met with Braddock to discuss communications and ended up serving as a key supply agent as well.

  Their work with Braddock brought Franklin and Washington together for the first time, possibly at Frederick, Maryland, in April. By this time, each man knew the other by reputation. Franklin had published excerpts of Washington’s letters and journal from the frontier in the Pennsylvania Gazette. An avid consumer of London magazines, Washington must have read about Franklin, who was by then the most famous colonist in the British Empire.

  Franklin arrived at Frederick with his son William on April 18 to set up express mail routes to facilitate communications between the army and key colonial capitals. There he learned the extent of Braddock’s anger at Pennsylvania for not providing financial support for the British troops and at Maryland and Virginia for not supplying 150 promised wagons and four-horse teams to transport the army’s supplies across the mountains from Fort Cumberland to Fort Duquesne. Pennsylvania’s governor, a lackey of the colony’s British proprietors, had blamed the lack of support on the colonial assembly’s pacifist Quaker party. A leading non-Quaker member of that assembly, Franklin explained to Braddock that the legislature had voted the funds, only to have the governor veto the bill because it did not give him control over disbursements. As for wagons and horses, Franklin offered to procure them from Pennsylvania farmers on fair terms. Braddock was elated and, when Franklin delivered on his promise, said it was “almost the only Instance of Ability and Honesty I have known in these Provinces.”18

  Franklin secured the wagons and horses by printing a public advertisement offering “fair and equitable” rental terms for a projected four-month-long campaign, but with a devious twist. Braddock was “extremely exasperated” at not having received the needed wagons from Pennsylvania and, if they were not delivered by May 20, would likely send “Sir John S
t. Clair, the Hussar, with a Body of Soldiers” to secure them, Franklin warned in a concluding reference to the general’s abusive quartermaster: “Violent Measures will probably be used.” As a “Friend and Well-wisher” who had “no particular Interest in this Affair,” Franklin advised the farmers to accept the offer and “make it easy to yourselves.”19 Of course, Braddock expected the wagons from Maryland and Virginia, not Pennsylvania, and never threatened to commandeer them. Although St. Clair had roughly treated workers engaged in building local supply routes, he was neither a hussar mercenary nor under orders to confiscate wagons. Still, the ploy worked and Franklin was widely praised for securing the wagons and horses. “I cannot but honour Franklin for the last Clause of his Advertisement,” Braddock’s military secretary wrote to the Pennsylvania governor.20

  Braddock dispatched letters to his superiors in London commending Franklin. The two men, the former sixty and the latter nearly fifty, got along famously and dined together often. “This general was I think a brave Man, and might probably have made a Figure as a good Officer in some European War,” Franklin later commented. But when he warned the general about the risk of ambush by Native warriors on the long march to Fort Duquesne, he recalled Braddock smugly replying, “These Savage may indeed be a formidable Enemy to your raw American Militia; but upon the King’s regular and disciplin’d Troops, Sir, it is impossible they should make an Impression.”21 Washington would later give Braddock a similar warning, to the same effect. Before Franklin left Frederick, he also arranged for gifts of supplies, including coffee, chocolate, and rum, for the army’s junior officers, winning more goodwill for himself and Pennsylvania.

  AS FRANKLIN WAS CONCLUDING THESE ARRANGEMENTS, Washington was rushing toward Braddock’s headquarters in Frederick. He had experienced a life-altering nine months since his capitulation at Fort Necessity. First, he came to terms with his own defeat by recognizing his rashness and learning from it. Second, as shown by his rising social status, although Washington was still admired in Virginia for his military exploits in part due to wildly exaggerated claims of enemy casualties at Fort Necessity—some three hundred rather than the actual three—Dinwiddie turned against his former protégé in light of British displeasure with the young officer’s failures. After the loss of men at Fort Necessity, the governor re-formed the Virginia Regiment into local companies with a mere captain in charge of each. Not willing to accept demotion, Washington resigned. Third, Washington became master of Mount Vernon and its eighteen slaves following the death of his eldest brother Lawrence’s last surviving child, Sarah, at age four in 1754. Technically, he rented the family plantation from Lawrence’s remarried widow until her death in 1761, but, under Lawrence’s will, he would then inherit it. Born the third son and by a second wife, Washington succeeded to the status of landed gentry though the death of Lawrence and all his heirs.

  Finally, once Braddock had arrived in February 1755, with two regiments charged with the capture of Fort Duquesne, Washington became invaluable as the frontier military guide who best knew the terrain ahead. In warfare, experts affirm, geography is destiny. Through his chief aide Robert Orme, Braddock invited Washington onto his personal staff.

  For his part, Washington welcomed the chance to serve in a real army under a respected general with the prospect of a royal commission as a regular British officer. “My inclinations are strongly bent to arms,” Washington wrote late in 1754.22 At least initially, Braddock could offer nothing higher than a temporary captaincy, but with victory, more was possible, and so Washington volunteered to serve as an aide-de-camp with nothing beyond his rank as a former colonial officer and the hope of a future British colonelcy. In April 1755, he was dashing to catch up with Braddock at Frederick in anticipation of a triumphant march on Fort Duquesne and revenge for his defeat at Fort Necessity.

  By the end of May, Braddock and his British regulars, Washington and companies from four different colonies, and Franklin’s wagons—about 2200 men in all, along with some 120 camp women serving in domestic roles—converged on Fort Cumberland to begin the 110-mile march over rugged, densely forested mountains toward Fort Duquesne. The main missing components were Native warriors and scouts, nearly all of whom Braddock had alienated by refusing to recognize their right to permanently remain in the Ohio Country.

  The road proved far worse than expected, forcing the army to grade and widen it along the way so that the artillery and heavy wagons could pass. Departing Fort Cumberland in early June, the troops moved slowly until, at Washington’s suggestion, Braddock split his force between an advance column of about thirteen hundred proven soldiers and a support column that trailed ever farther behind improving the road and bringing up most of the heavy artillery and supplies.

  By this point, Washington had fallen gravely ill with violent fevers and headaches, likely from the dysentery sweeping through camp, and severe hemorrhoids, which forced him at first to ride in a wagon with the advance column and then, upon Braddock’s orders, to remain behind until sufficiently recovered to travel. Any other course, the doctors warned, could prove fatal. The only concession that Washington could wrest from Braddock was a promise to call him forward before the assault on the fort. Thanks to patent medicine suggested by Braddock, Washington felt himself “tolerably well recoverd” by July 2 and, again traveling by wagon, caught up to Braddock’s main force on July 8, some twelve miles from Fort Duquesne.23

  Up to this point, the British had encountered surprisingly little resistance from the French or their Native allies, who closely monitored Braddock’s advance. In the dense, unfamiliar forest, however, waiting for an attack could be as terrorizing as an actual one, especially for soldiers conversant in stories about the stealth and savagery of Native Americans. In reality, Native warriors preferred taking able-bodied captives, whom they could parade as trophies, use as slaves, and ransom as hostages. Scalping enemies produced a lesser prize, but Braddock’s men brooded more on the latter fate, which typically befell the dead and wounded. Neither diabolical nor depraved, Native Americans acted sensibly in light of their objectives and values, a truth that Franklin understood better than Washington.

  Lacking sufficient men of his own, Captain Claude-Pierre Pécaudey, seigneur de Contrecoeur, the commander at Fort Duquesne, had recruited an army of Native warriors to his side, mostly Ottawa, Wyandot, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe from the Great Lakes region. These warriors, he knew, would fight, not to defend the fort, but to kill and capture British soldiers. With the British within a day’s march of Fort Duquesne, on the morning of July 9, Contrecoeur dispatched more than 600 Native warriors, along with 250 French officers, colonial regulars, and Canadian militiamen—roughly half of his entire force but less than two-thirds of Braddock’s advance column—to strike the British before they reached the fort. The British set off that same morning from their camp about ten miles south of Fort Duquesne in a mile-long column. A forward unit of 300 British regulars led the way, followed by a company of New York soldiers guarding 250 civilian road workers. The main body of 500 British infantry marched in long, parallel lines flanking supply wagons, artillery, and camp women. With cushions strapped to his saddle to soften the ride for his hemorrhoids, Washington rode alongside Braddock in the main force. A rear guard of Virginians trailed behind while small parties patrolled the flanks.

  Around 1:00 P.M., after fording the Monongahela River for a second time that morning, the British entered an open woods cleared of underbrush as a Native hunting ground. Trees offered cover for hunters without obstructing their line of fire. By all accounts, the British were tired from their march and anxious in their surroundings while the Natives were fresh and at home in the forest. Here, the two armies met without warning.

  Three quick volleys by the British forward unit disrupted the French regulars but sent the Natives streaming into the woods on either side of the British column, which they rained with fire from protected positions. Easy targets, mounted officers fell first: fifteen of the forward unit’s ei
ghteen within ten minutes. Leaderless, this unit fell back just as the main force rushed forward and the unarmed road workers dashed for cover, causing pandemonium in the ranks and added losses by friendly fire.

  Trained to stand together and fire at similarly ordered enemy soldiers, the British found themselves exposed to a withering barrage with no obvious targets for return fire. “The French and Indians crept about in small Parties,” one survivor wrote, “and in all the Time I never saw one, nor could I on Enquiry find any one who saw ten together. The Loss killed and wounded 864.”24 With four horses shot out from under him, Braddock tried to rally his men until he dropped to the ground with a bullet in his chest—a mortal but not immediately fatal wound. Then the survivors retreated in an ever more panicked state across the river to their rear, leaving most of their wounded, baggage, wagons, and supplies. Nearly all the camp women were killed or captured.

  Washington, Braddock’s only uninjured aide-de-camp and remarkably calm under fire, loaded the wounded but still conscious general into a cart, escorted him across the river, and then rode back to form a rear guard and help restore order to the fleeing troops. His action saved many. “I have been protected beyond all human probability & expectation,” Washington later reported to his brother, “for I had 4 Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me yet although death was levelling my companions on every side of me, escaped unhurt.”25