We are all familiar with July 4, 1776, but did you know American Independence might have been quite different were it not for events on July 4, 1754?
It was on that date that a 21-year-old Colonel in the Virginia Militia led his men on a retreat out of Fort Necessity after tangling with a French force more than twice what he had under his command. That young military man was George Washington. He took casualties 10:1 to his adversary.
A brief historical backdrop is necessary to make sense of this.
The British and French were vying for control over North America. American Indians were playing the two sides off against each other for their own strategic purposes. Some would ally with the British, some with the French, and some played both sides.
Prominent families in Virginia made claims to western territories and Washington’s family were big investors in the Virginia company. Young George at 19 both surveyed and was an active investor in these western lands which are now part of Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Washington and others reported that the French were making attempts to wrest control of this area and were building a fort to control the major rivers, which served as the most important commercial highways and communications nodes in the area. The most important was Fort Duquesne, present-day Pittsburgh, where several rivers converge to form the mighty Ohio River, the key to controlling the western frontier.
Washington volunteered to go back into the area and deliver a message to the French from the British Crown in essence to tell the French to kindly vacate the area. Ironically, similar French units were looking for British authorities to deliver the same message.
Events remain shrouded even today as to what happened next, but basically, the two sides met near what is now Uniontown, Pennsylvania, high up on Chestnut Ridge in a place appropriately called Gloomy Hollow (now Jumonville Glen).
Most renditions have Washington’s forces surprising the French, a firefight broke out with Washington reportedly firing the first shot, with casualties on both sides. After the French surrendered to Washington, Washington “lost control” of one of his Indian allies (Mingo chief Tanacharison). The French commander was murdered by a tomahawk attack, and the Indian washed his hands in the Frenchman’s brains which spilled from his split skull.
This was the cold-blooded murder of a French officer and diplomat named Jumonville.
It was an act of war.
At least one Frenchman escaped and made his way back to Fort Duquesne to tell of the dastardly attack. A large force of over 800 men was dispatched to find Washington’s “raiders”.
Washington retreated to the Great Meadow not far away and threw up a crude temporary stockade and breastworks for his 293 men. He called in Fort Necessity, a very apt name.
On July 3, they were attacked and took heavy casualties. In a twist of history, the leader of the French retaliatory force was led by none other than the brother of the slain French officer, Jumonville. He was not in a good mood.
Washington was forced to surrender and basically sign a document saying he and his forces were responsible for the murder of a French officer. Washington would later claim the translation was garbled and he admitted to no such thing. But otherwise, after 30 or so casualties, they were allowed to leave the area.
But grave implications were to follow. The next time, the British would come back with substantial force.
Thus, a 21-year-old Virginia militia commander fired the shots that started the French and Indian War, or what is more broadly called the Seven Years War, considered by most historians as the first world war in history. It was fought in North America, in the Caribbean, and even in India.
From the standpoint of the North American theatre of the conflict, the British would come back the next year with a very large force for the time under the command of Major General Edward Braddock. Despite his logistical and road-building success (cutting hundreds of miles through a virgin forest), he would suffer a disastrous defeat attempting to take Fort Duquesne, mostly at the hand of Indians, the best light infantry in North America.
While much now lies on private property, portions of the famed Braddock road from the coast of Virginia to western Pennsylvania remain today. Braddock was buried in the road, succumbing to his wounds suffered at Monongahela. Some of this road became Route 1, or the National Pike, the first real “interstate” road in America. It was by far the largest engineering project in the colonies.
The defeat of Braddock at the Battle of Monongahela lead to a second successful attempt to take Fort Duquesne under General John Forbes, who then built Fort Pitt, hence Pittsburgh.
Almost all of the British officers were killed during the Battle of Monongahela and the retreat was largely commanded by a young George Washington, who seemed always in the mix of things. His leadership was exemplary and his stamina was extraordinary (he had been gravely ill). After having musket balls go through his hat, through his coat, and having two horses shot out from underneath him, it seemed as if Providence had placed a hand on his shoulder.
Many at the time remarked on this, as did Washington himself in his personal writings. That hand would remain on the man for the duration of the war, and the next big war, that for American Independence. And it would seem, for even greater challenges ahead.
Who would have thought this young colonel, who hit the trip wire to start a world conflagration between great empires, would wind up becoming the first President of a nation that would become the most powerful on earth and the world’s longest-running democratic enterprise?
The implications of the French and Indian War are extensive, but here a just a few brief historical observations.
The war determined who would rule North America. That is why we inherited the English language, English common law, and English notions of liberty.
American colonists developed a sense they were their own people as civilians were abused by British troops and officers who treated militiamen as inferiors. Yet, by fighting alongside the British, we discovered we were as good at warfare, or better, as they were. All this would come in handy just 20 years later when upstart revolutionaries would take on the most powerful empire on earth.
Many Americans who fought at the Battle of Monongahela and other battles, learned warfare and about each other, and formed a cadre of experience for the coming Revolutionary War. The American style of fighting, learned from combat with Native Americans, would serve them well at Lexington and Concord, and especially the British retreat back to Boston.
This would also come into play in subsequent battles with Native Americans over the control of the territory west of Pittsburgh.
Indian depredations of the frontier settlements, which exploded during both the French and Indian War, and the subsequent War of Independence, set hardened attitudes on both sides about the nature of their conflict that would extend for many years, but ultimately end in the conquering of native peoples.
Not long after Washington would become President, the Native Americans would hand the New Americans their worst defeat ever at the Battle of the Wabash, defeating American General St. Clair. Almost the entire Army of the new United States was lost(an astounding 97% casualty rate), allowing the Indian Confederacy and their British allies to continue control of the West in violation of the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War.
Afterward, Washington wanted a permanent professional army, and he got it. While he understood the anti-Federalist view, he had seen the deficiencies of the militia system firsthand.
This would lead to the founding of the United States Army, a professional military, long found objectionable by anti-Federalists who felt standing armies were a threat to liberty. But such a professional army was needed and under “Mad” Anthony Wayne, he would initiate a long string of defeats for Native Americans.
The tremendous cost of the Seven Years’ War would destabilize the treasuries of both Britain and France. After the war, the British wanted the colonies to help pay for the struggle and started to tax the colonies, while tightening political control over them without much consent from those governed. The concept of “taxation without representation” was born.
As a result of this effort to raise money, and the colonial reaction to it, the British would eventually lose her American colonies and a new nation would be formed.
France limped along financially and then decided to aid the American Revolution, another drain on their treasury. Subsequent financial pressures and inflation were economically and socially destabilizing and were factors leading to the French Revolution. This revolution had its American sympathizers but it took a decidedly different course than the American one. We got Washington, and the French got Napoleon.
The French Revolution echoes in our own “woke” politics even today and shaped much subsequent European history.
All this seems to have been set in motion in a heavily wooded glen just outside a small town in Pennsylvania. It occurred high up on Chestnut Ridge in the Laurel Highlands, in the mountains just south of Uniontown. This town, once a thriving center for coal and steel, was ironically founded on July 4, 1776, quite independently of the gathering taking place across the state in Philadelphia.
In the misty hollows on Chestnut Ridge, there was a giant of a man there, both in form and spirit. Some 6 feet four inches at a time when most men barely made it over five feet, he also displayed a spine of steel with a commanding demeanor. Even as a youth, he had an air of confidence and competence about him. Native American leaders at the time opined he would become a great leader of his people. But in these events, he lost control of his men, and subsequent developments led to the murder of a French officer. That in turn led to the humiliating defeat at Fort Necessity on July 4, 1754.
Washington had no way of knowing he literally would start a world war, and all these subsequent events would forever change both American and world history.
Without all these strange happenings, would we have had George Washington, who would literally become “the indispensable” man? Without him, it is arguable that we would have never gotten to July 4, 1776. Would not the world as we know it be vastly different?
And what can explain his many remarkable and frequent escapes from death? Almost all of them simply defy rational explanations.
History, it would seem, reverberates in strange and significant ways, from the dark forests and quiet glens of Western Pennsylvania.
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Photos are courtesy of the author and were taken at Fort Necessity National Battlefield.
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