You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [18]
AMERICA, 1753–1754
Paul A. Thomsen
Later he became the “father of his country,” but in the beginning George Washington was less than a great leader. As a young man, George Washington longed for a life of adventure and exploration, but a manipulative mother, a collection of needy siblings, and the intricate affairs of his family’s Virginia plantation conspired to keep him close to home.
In 1753, Washington indulged his growing hunger for adventure as a “weekend warrior” in Virginia’s colonial militia. However, after months of dress and military study passed, the young Virginian still craved a life apart from home and hearth. Thus when his colonial governor, Robert Dinwiddie, offered Washington the chance to help settle a key colonial dispute far away in the French-controlled Ohio Valley, the young Virginian jumped at the opportunity.
European troubles were bound to visit the American continent, but for close to two hundred years cool heads and collected colonial minds had managed to keep Europe’s wars Europe’s affairs. While England and France argued for decades over the proper demarcation lines between their two major American colonial holdings, each actually had little impetus to resolve the matters of minor backwater border disputes in the American Ohio Valley. England’s hands-off approach, however, worried their Virginian colony as rumors began to fly over a regional French military buildup. When word eventually reached the colonial powers that their centuries-old neighbors/adversaries were actually building fortifications on lands claimed by the distant Virginians, it seemed imperative for the colonials to send a representative to the French-claimed area with an eye for detail, a quiet demeanor, and a steady hand with which one might convey to the French an ultimatum to depart the contested land. Though whoever went, the French garrisons, trappers, and most natives were likely to see him as he was, more of a spy than a messenger.
Though other Virginian men were more senior in rank and had greater experience, they begged off the dangerous opportunity. With nowhere else to turn, on October 31, 1753, Governor Robert Dinwiddie offered the position to the energetic, albeit inexperienced, twenty-one-year-old George Washington. Holding the rank of major and having served as a part-time surveyor, Washington was expected to traverse the rugged and largely untraveled countryside, descend into the Ohio Valley, make notes on the French force he encountered, deliver his colony’s message, and return promptly home with the naively expected French response of compliance. It was a daunting prospect for the young Virginian, but remembering the ingenuity exhibited by his father and half brother years prior (one as a frontier leader, and the other while serving a tour of duty in the British military’s Caribbean campaign), and perhaps sensing some special insight in the boy, Dinwiddie was convinced George Washington would do his family, his colony and his empire well.
Major George Washington’s party departed for the wilderness before the first day was out. Struggling through heavy bouts of precipitation and early winter winds, the company soon reached the forked Ohio River (present-day Pittsburgh). Christopher Gist, the party’s backwoodsman, led the group to a nearby locale favored by Iroquois natives loyal to the English Crown, hoping to gain a native guide to speed their journey. Major Washington held ulterior motives for the stopover however. He wanted to convince the region’s tribal leader, the Half-King, to provide the Virginians with an armed escort of tribal braves to the French lines. The young officer thought that if he conducted the pending meeting properly, the party’s arrival at the French fortification, augmented by numerous regional natives, would convey a strong show of force and ensure their shared adversaries compliance with the intended ultimatum.
Reality, however, intervened.
When the young and naive Major Washington was finally awarded an audience with the Half-King, his plans came undone by his