A Day Providence Saved George Washington's Life, 1755
Time Surfing: Graphic History
Time Surfing: Experience History.
Historical Backdrop
In the summer of 1755, Britain and France were fighting an undeclared war over the forks of the Ohio River, where the French had built Fort Duquesne (today’s Pittsburgh). Major General Edward Braddock, a 60-year-old career officer, cut a twelve-foot road through 110 miles of mountain wilderness to take the fort with roughly 1,300 regulars, provincials, sailors, artillery, and a train of wagons and packhorses.
Riding with him as an unpaid volunteer aide-de-camp was 23-year-old George Washington of Virginia — six feet two, red-haired, ambitious, and desperate for a royal commission. Washington had spent the previous two weeks flat on his back in a wagon with bloody flux.
Date/time and location: 2:00 a.m., Tuesday, July 9, 1755 — British camp on Sugar Creek, east bank of the Monongahela, about two miles above the mouth of the Youghiogheny (present-day Duquesne, Pennsylvania)
The drums wake you in the dark, and your bowels wake with them. You have had the bloody flux for seventeen days. You spent most of them in a jolting wagon, and last night you begged Braddock to let you ride today. Your servant John Alton, sick himself, holds a lantern while you get into your coat. You swallow another dose of Dr. James’s Powders, chalky and bitter, and wash it down with rum and water. Two pillows are lashed over your saddle because sitting on leather is unbearable. Around you, twelve hundred men strike tents in blackness lit by cook fires. Smells: wet ash, horse dung, boiling salt pork, the open latrine trench. You are twenty-three years old, and today the army expects to see Fort Duquesne.
Date/time and location: 4:45 a.m. — First ford of the Monongahela, at the mouth of the Youghiogheny (present-day McKeesport, Pennsylvania)
You ride down a clay bank into the river. The water is knee-deep on the horses and waist-deep on the grenadiers, and it is cold enough to make men swear out loud. Royal Navy sailors in short jackets rig block and tackle to haul the six-pounders across the stones. Wagon wheels slip and grind. A packhorse goes down and thrashes; drovers whip it up. Braddock sits his gray charger midstream, red-faced, shouting at Sir John St. Clair to keep the working party moving. You hold your reins in one hand and press the other to your belly. Every jolt is a knife. Above the far bank the forest stands green and silent, and nobody is shooting at you, and that seems like a good sign.
Date/time and location: 9:00 a.m. — Line of march on the west bank flats, between the two fords
The column stretches almost a mile through bottomland heat. Dust hangs in the trees. Flies work the horses’ eyes and the men’s faces. You ride up beside Braddock and say what you have said three times before: send the Virginia rangers and the Indians out wide, into the woods, ahead and on both flanks. He answers that he will not scatter his army for the sake of a few savages. Scarouady, the Oneida chief, rides near you with silver in his ears and grief on his face; British soldiers shot his son dead by mistake three days ago. You count seven Indian scouts. Three days ago there were more. The soldiers march in step, shoes on cut stumps, twelve feet of road and green wall on either side.
Date/time and location: 12:40 p.m. — Second ford of the Monongahela, below the mouth of Turtle Creek, near John Frazier’s abandoned cabin (present-day Braddock, Pennsylvania)
You will remember this the rest of your life. The whole army crosses in full view at once, and Braddock has ordered it done in style. Drums beat the Grenadiers’ March. Fifes shrill over the water. The colors come out of their cases and snap in the wind. Thirteen hundred men in scarlet wade the shallows in ranks, bayonets throwing white light, brass guns rolling, horses lunging, sun straight overhead. The river is loud. The wet red wool steams. You sit your horse on the gravel bar and forget your fever for a full minute. Seven miles to the French fort. You think it is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. Nothing at all moves in the woods on the far bank.
Date/time and location: 1:30 p.m. — Halt on the north bank, at Frazier’s ruined cabin, seven miles from Fort Duquesne
The column halts to close up and dry off. You slide down off the bay because your gut cannot take another mile, and you stand holding the bridle, legs shaking. Men fill canteens from the river and gnaw hard biscuit and cold salt pork. A soldier pulls off his shoe to lance a blister with a bayonet point. Frazier’s cabin is a burned shell; the French took him out of it last year. Lieutenant Colonel Gage’s advance party moves off up the road, three hundred men, grenadiers and axemen and two guns. Sir John St. Clair follows with the working party. Braddock chews his lip and tells you the fort will fall in three days. You believe him. It is very hot. The cicadas are loud.
Date/time and location: 2:05 p.m. — With the main body, about a quarter mile behind the advance guard
You hear it before you understand it. A ragged crackle of musketry up the road, then British volleys, three of them, heavy and disciplined. Then a sound you have heard once before and never forgotten — hundreds of voices whooping at once from both sides of the road, a high broken shrieking that fills the forest and comes from everywhere and nowhere. The men around you stop dead. Horses fling their heads. Braddock’s face goes dark red. He orders Lieutenant Colonel Burton forward with eight hundred men and spurs up the road himself. You get your foot in the stirrup, drag yourself up, and follow. Smoke is already coming down the road to meet you, low and white, smelling of rotten eggs.
Date/time and location: 2:25 p.m. — On the road, where the advance guard collapses back into the main body
