Washington [30]
By mid-March, as intelligence reports filtered back from the Ohio Country of a French raiding party speeding toward the Forks of the Ohio, an apprehensive Dinwiddie ordered Washington “to march what soldiers you have enlisted immediately to the Ohio.”4 He furnished Washington with broadly elastic orders. In general, he was to maintain a defensive posture but could initiate hostilities if the French meddled with any military works or English settlements. Not mincing words, Dinwiddie granted him the power to apply deadly force, telling him that “you are to restrain all such offenders and in case of resistance to make prisoners of or kill and destroy them.”5 This open-ended mandate was crucial to the dramatic events shortly to unfold.
On April 2, 1754, Washington set out for the wilderness with 160 green recruits. For the first time, he must have felt like a true commander. Their supply-laden wagons progressed slowly, for the men had to carve out a frontier road. Three weeks later, at the junction of Wills Creek and the Potomac, a courier swept into Washington’s camp with calamitous news: French troops had descended on the Forks en masse, forcing the surrender of British forces building a fort there; the French had renamed this pivotal outpost Fort Duquesne. It mattered little that the British had been aided by the Half King and his warriors, for the disparity in forces had been staggering: the French had assembled one thousand troops, 360 boats and canoes, and eighteen artillery pieces to subdue thirty-four helpless British soldiers. Not surprisingly, as the news percolated through camp, Washington had to cope with sinking morale and threatened desertions. He reassured the Half King that while his own detachment was too small to repel the French, it merely embodied the vanguard of “a great number of our warriors that are immediately to follow with our great guns, our ammunition, and our provision.”6 Washington evoked a phantom force, since Colonel Fry was bringing up the rear with little more than a hundred soldiers.
Far from being intimidated, the courageous Washington burned with what he called a “glowing zeal.”7 Once again he played the impromptu diplomat in the wilderness and dashed off spirited letters to Lieutenant Governor James Hamilton of Pennsylvania and Governor Horatio Sharpe of Maryland, rallying them to send reinforcements. He was achingly aware of his youthful presumption in doing so, saying apologetically to Sharpe, “I ought first to have begged pardon of your excellency for this liberty of writing, as I am not happy enough to be ranked among those of your acquaintance.” He tried to stir the governors to action in ringing language, saying that the present contest “should rouse from the lethargy we have fallen into the heroic spirit of every free-born Englishman to assert the rights and privileges of our king.”8 An unknown young surveyor two years earlier, Washington was now penning admonitory letters to governors of neighboring colonies. Evidently he succeeded, because both Maryland and Pennsylvania dispatched more troops.
Strangely enough, at this moment of looming confrontation with the French, Washington wrangled bitterly with Dinwiddie over the mundane matter of pay. Washington and his men smarted over the inferior compensation colonial officers received compared with regular officers. In mid-May Washington expressed dismay to Dinwiddie over a decision by the House of Burgesses to fix their pay at a steep discount to royal British salaries, stating that he would rather serve without pay than suffer this indignity: “But let me serve voluntarily. Then I will, with the greatest pleasure in life, devote my services to the expedition without any other reward than the