Historic Highways of America Volume IV Part 7

This is particularly true of Braddock's Road when you find it in the forests; everything that savage mark tells in the open country is reechoed in mightier tones within the shadows of the woods. There the wide strange track is like nothing of which you ever heard or read. It looks nothing like a roadway. It is plainly not the track of a tornado, though its width and straight course in certain places would suggest this. Yet it is never the same in two places; here, it is a wide straight aisle covered with rank weeds in the center of the low, wet course; there, the forests impinge upon it where the ground is drier; here, it appears like the abandoned bed of a brook, the large stones removed from its track lying on each side as though strewn there by a river's torrent; there, it swings quickly at right angles near the open where the whole width is covered with velvet gra.s.s radiant in the suns.h.i.+ne which can reach it here. In the forests more than elsewhere the deep furrow of the roadway has remained wet, and for this reason trees have not come up. At many points the road ran into marshy ground and here a large number of roundabout courses speak of the desperate struggles the old teamsters had on this early track a century ago. And now and then as you pa.s.s along, scattered blocks and remnants of stone chimneys mark the sites of ancient taverns and homesteads.

In the forests it is easy to conjure up the scene when this old track was opened--for it was cut through a "wooden country," to use an expression common among the pioneers. Here you can see the long line of sorry wagons standing in the road when the army is encamped; and though many of them seem unable to carry their loads one foot further--yet there is ever the ringing chorus of the axes of six hundred choppers sounding through the twilight of the hot May evening. It is almost suffocating in the forests when the wind does not blow, and the army is unused to the scorching American summer which has come early this year.

The wagon train is very long, and though the van may have halted on level ground, the line behind stretches down and up the shadowy ravines.

The wagons are blocked in all conceivable positions on the hillsides.

The condition of the horses is pitiful beyond description. If some are near to the brook or spring, others are far away. Some horses will never find water tonight. To the right and left the sentinels are lost in the surrounding gloom.

And then with those singing axes for the perpetual refrain, consider the mighty epic poem to be woven out of the days that have succeeded Braddock here. Though lost in the Alleghenies, this road and all its busy days mirror perfectly the social advance of the western empire to which it led. Its first mission was to bind, as with a strange, rough, straggling cincture the East and the West. The young colonies were being confined to the Atlantic Ocean by a chain of forts the French were forging from Quebec to New Orleans. Had they not awakened to the task of shattering that chain it is doubtful if the expansion of the colonies could ever have meant what it has to the western world. Could Virginia have borne a son in the western wilderness, Kentucky by name, if France had held the Ohio Valley? Could North Carolina have given birth to a Tennessee if France had made good her claim to the Mississippi? Could New England and New York and Pennsylvania have produced the fruits the nineteenth century saw blossom in the Old Northwest if France had maintained her hold within that mighty empire? The rough track of Braddock's Road, almost forgotten and almost obliterated, is one of the best memorials of the earliest struggle of the Colonies for the freedom which was indispensable to their progress. There was not an hour throughout the Revolutionary struggle when the knowledge of the great West that was to be theirs was not a powerful inspiration to the bleeding colonies; aye, there was not a moment when the gallant commander of those ragged armies forgot that there was a West into which he could retreat at the darkest hour over Braddock's twelve-foot road.

That is the great significance of this first track through the "wooden country"--an awakened consciousness.

The traveller at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, is within striking distance of Braddock's Road at its most interesting points. A six-mile climb to the summit of Laurel Hill brings one upon the old-time route which will be found near Was.h.i.+ngton's Spring. A delightful drive along the summit of the mountain northward brings one near the notorious "Dunbar's Camp"

where so many relics of the campaign have been found and of which many may be seen in the museum of the nearby Pennsylvania Soldiers' Orphans'

Home. Here Dunbar destroyed the quant.i.ties of stores and ammunition with which he could not advance, much less retreat. The visitor here should find "Jumonville's Grove," about a quarter of a mile up the valley, and should not miss the view from Dunbar's k.n.o.b.

Less than one mile eastward of Chalk Hill, beside a brook which bears Braddock's name, beneath a cl.u.s.ter of solemn pines, lies the dust of the sacrificed Braddock. If there is any question as to whether his body was interred at this spot, there is no question but that all the good he ever did is buried here. Deserted by those who should have helped him most, fed with promises that were never kept, defeated because he could not find the breath to cry "retreat" until a French bullet drove it to his throat--he is remembered by his private vices which the whole world would quickly have forgotten had he won his last fight. He was typical of his time--not worse.

In studying Braddock's letters, preserved in the Public Records Office, London, it has been of interest to note that he never blamed an inferior--as he boasted in the anecdote previously related. His most bitter letter has been reproduced, and a study of it will make each line of more interest. His criticism of the Colonial troops was sharp, but his praise of them when they had been tried in fire was unbounded. He does not directly criticise St. Clair--though his successful rival for honors on the Ohio, Forbes, accused St. Clair in 1758 not only of ignorance but of actual treachery. "This Behavior in the people" is Braddock's charge, and no one will say the accusation was unjust.

With something more than ordinary good judgment Braddock singled out good friends. What men in America, at the time, were more influential in their spheres than Franklin, Was.h.i.+ngton, and Morris? These were almost the only men he, finally, had any confidence in or respect for.

Was.h.i.+ngton knew Braddock as well as any man, and who but Was.h.i.+ngton, in the happier days of 1784, searched for his grave by Braddock's Run in vain, desirous of erecting a monument over it?

Mr. King, editor of the Pittsburg _Commercial-Gazette_, in 1872 took an interest in Braddock's Grave, planted the pines over it and enclosed them. A slip from a willow tree that grew beside Napoleon's grave at St.

Helena was planted here but did not grow. There is little doubt that Braddock's dust lies here. He was buried in the roadway near this brook, and at this point, early in the last century, workmen repairing the road discovered the remains of an officer. The remains were reinterred here on the high ground beside the c.u.mberland Road, on the opposite bank of Braddock's Run. They were undoubtedly Braddock's.

As you look westward along the roadway toward the grave, the significant gorge on the right will attract your attention. It is the old pathway of Braddock's Road, the only monument or significant token in the world of the man from whom it was named. Buried once in it--near the cl.u.s.ter of gnarled apple-trees in the center of the open meadow beyond--he is now buried, and finally no doubt, beside it. But its hundreds of great gorges and vacant swampy isles in the forests will last long after any monument that can be raised to his memory.

Braddock's Road broke the league the French had made with the Alleghenies; it showed that British grit could do as much in the interior of America as in India or Africa or Egypt; it was the first important material structure in this New West, so soon to be filled with the sons of those who had hewn it.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Entick, _History of the Late War_, vol. i., p. 110.

[2] Entick, _History of the Late War_, vol. i., p. 124.

[3] _Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy_, vol. iii., p. 55.

[4] _Letters of Walpole_, (edited by Cunningham, London 1877), vol. ii., p. 461.

[5] Entick _History of the Late War_, vol. i., p. 142.

[6] _History of the Late War_, vol. i., p. 142.

[7] _Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. 75, p. 389 (1755); also _A Review of the Military Operations in North America_, London, 1757, p. 35.

[8] _A letter relating to the Ohio Defeat_, p. 14.

[9] Walpole's _Memoirs of George II_, vol. ii., p. 29.

[10] Walpole's _Memoirs of George II_, vol. ii., p. 29; also London _Evening Post_, September 9-11, 1755.

[11] Walpole's _Memoirs of George II_, vol. i., p. 397; Sargent's _History of Braddock's Expedition_, p. 153, note.

[12] Minutes taken "At a Council at the Camp at Alexandria in Virginia, April 14, 1755." Public Records Office, London: _America and West Indies_, No. 82.

[13] Braddock's MS. Letters, Public Records Office, London: _America and West Indies_, No. 82.

[14] For these early routes through Pennsylvania, partially opened in 1755, see _Historic Highways of America_, vol. v., chap. I.

[15] _Maryland Archives_; Correspondence of Governor Sharpe, vol. i., pp. 77 and 97.

[16] Preserved at the Congressional Library, Was.h.i.+ngton.

[17] Eight miles from Alexandria. See Note 26.

[18] Arguments pro and con have been interestingly summed up by Dr.

Marcus Benjamin of the U. S. National Museum, in a paper read before the Society of Colonial Dames in the District of Columbia April 12, 1899, and by Hugh T. Taggart in the _Was.h.i.+ngton Star_, May 16, 1896. For a description of routes converging on Braddock's Road at Fort c.u.mberland see Gen. Wm. P. Craighill's article in the _West Virginia Historical Magazine_, vol. ii, no. 3 (July, 1902), p. 31. Cf. pp. 179-181.

[19] London, Groombridge & Sons, 1854. Mr. Morris, in footnotes, gave what he considered any important variations of the original ma.n.u.script from the expanded version he was editing; Mr. Sargent reproduced these notes, without having seen the original.

[20] _History of Braddock's Expedition_, p. 359, note.

[21] _History of Braddock's Expedition_, p. 359, note.

[22] Mr. Gordon evidently used the word "self" in his entry of June 3 to throw any too curious reader off the track.

[23] _History of Braddock's Expedition_, p. 387.

[24] _History of Braddock's Expedition_, p. 365.

[25] In the Gordon Journal, under the date of June 10, there are two entries. One seems to have been Gordon's and reads: "The Director of the Hospital came to see me in Camp, and found me so ill.... I went into the Hospital, & the Army marched with the Train &c., and as I was in hopes of being able to follow them in a few days, I sent all my baggage with the Army." Without doubt this was Gordon's entry, as no sailor could have had sufficient baggage to warrant such a reference as this, while an engineer's "kit" was an important item. Then follow two entries (June 24 and 26) evidently recorded by one who remained at Fort c.u.mberland, and a second entry under the date of June 10, which is practically the first sentence of the entry under the same date in the original ma.n.u.script, and which has the appearance of being the genuine record made by the sailor detained at Fort c.u.mberland. The confusion of these entries in the Gordon Journal makes it very evident that one author did not compose them. The two entries for June 10 are typical of "Mr Engineer Gordon" and an unknown sailor.

[26] This form of the name of the modern Rock Creek is significant and is not given in the expanded form of this journal. "Rock's Creek"

suggests that the great bowlder known as "Braddock's Rock" was a landmark in 1755 and had given the name to the stream which entered the Potomac near it.

[27] The use of full names in this journal is strong evidence that it is the original.

[28] The Gordon Journal a.s.siduously reverses every such particular as this; it reads here: "there are about 200 houses and 2 churches, one English, one Dutch."

[29] Though in almost every instance the Gordon Journal gives a more wordy account of each day's happenings, it _never gives a record for a day that is omitted by this journal_, as April 22, 23, and 28; at times, however, a day is omitted in that journal that is accounted for in this; see entries for May 9 and May 25--neither of which did Mr. Morris give in his footnotes, though the latter was of utmost significance.

[30] The words "from the French" are omitted in the Gordon Journal, which makes the entry utterly devoid of any meaning--unless that Cresap had been ordered to retire by the Ohio Company! Cresap in that doc.u.ment is called "a vile Rascal"; cf. Pennsylvania _Colonial Records_, vol.

vi., p. 400. For eulogy of Cresap see _Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Publications_, vol. xi.

[31] This is given for the 13th in the Gordon Journal.