The Colonial Wars, 1689-1762 by Howard H. Peckham

Author:Howard H. Peckham [Peckham, Howard H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 1964-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

VII

British Regulars and American Militia

Early in 1755 there arrived in Virginia Lieutenant Colonel Sir John St. Clair to serve as deputy quartermaster general to the regular and provincial forces. He at once went to work stockpiling supplies at the Wills Creek stronghold, now styled Fort Cumberland. Reviewing the three Independent Companies there, he promptly discharged forty of the most decrepit men. His manner indicated resoluteness and dispatch, qualities conspicuously lacking in the colonial supply service. His contracts for horses, rations, powder, etc., were several times the outlay for the 1754 expedition.

Near the end of February the new commander in chief of the British forces in North America reached Williamsburg. He was Major General Edward Braddock, sixty years old, an officer experienced more in garrison than battlefield, and a tough disciplinarian. Blunt and haughty, he was temperamentally the opposite of Commodore Warren, for instance, but he had been selected for his assignment by the Duke of Cumberland, Britain’s foremost soldier. Braddock arrived in advance of the two incomplete Irish regiments: the Forty-fourth under Sir Peter Halkett and the Forty-eighth under Colonel Thomas Dunbar.

Civilian George Washington met Braddock and was offered a position as aide-de-camp with a temporary commission as captain. The twenty-three-year-old proprietor of Mount Vernon accepted the position but not the commission; he who had once been a colonel preferred to serve as a volunteer, without pay. The operation of Mount Vernon was entrusted to a younger brother, and Washington joined Braddock at Alexandria in April.

The strategy for the coming campaign included three objectives. Braddock was to drive the French from Fort Duquesne and then perhaps assist in the taking of Fort Niagara, although the primary attack there would come from Governor William Shirley as major general. The third thrust was to be against Fort St. Frederic at Crown Point by William Johnson, the New York Indian agent, at the head of the northern militia. There was further talk of a campaign in Nova Scotia by the three regiments there. In conference with Shirley and several governors on these measures, Braddock was infuriated to learn that the colonies were not going to provide him with a common defense fund—indeed, Pennsylvania would not offer any money for warfare—and he was loudly impatient with their slowness in finding recruits and wagons. Braddock’s secretary, who was Governor Shirley’s son, was acute enough to observe: “We have a general most judiciously chosen for being disqualified for the service he is employed in, in almost every respect.”

The two Irish regiments and Braddock were encamped at Wills Creek on May 10, 1755. They still were not filled out to strength. Frontier difficulties already familiar to Washington now delayed the expedition further. The regular officers of exalted reputation showed themselves to be unresourceful, inefficient, and even stupid. Their failures were compounded by the indifference, avarice, and laziness of the local civilians who were supposed to help equip the military. What little material was available cost excessively.

While Braddock was stomping impatiently around Fort Cumberland, Lieutenant Governor Charles Lawrence of Nova Scotia was with reason worried over his position.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.