第18章 Chapter IV. The Passing Of The French Peril(1)

The great pile of the Appalachian peaks was not the only barrier which held back the settler with his plough and his rifle from following the trader's tinkling caravans into the valleys beyond.

Over the hills the French were lords of the land. The frontiersman had already felt their enmity through the torch and tomahawk of their savage allies. By his own strength alone he could not cope with the power entrenched beyond the hills; so he halted. But that power, by its unachievable desire to be overlord of two hemispheres, was itself to precipitate events which would open the westward road.

The recurring hour in the cycle of history, when the issue of Autocracy against Democracy cleaves the world, struck for the men of the eighteenth century as the second half of that century dawned. In our own day, happily, that issue has been perceived by the rank and file of the people. In those darker days, as France and England grappled in that conflict of systems which culminated in the Seven Years' War, the fundamental principles at stake were clear to only a handful of thinking men.

But abstractions, whether clear or obscure, do not cause ambassadors to demand their passports. The declaration of war awaits the overt act. Behold, then, how great a matter is kindled by a little fire! The casus belli between France and England in the Seven Years' War--the war which humbled France in Europe and lost her India and Canada--had to do with a small log fort built by a few Virginians in 1754 at the Forks of the Ohio River and wrested from them in the same year by a company of Frenchmen from Canada.

The French claimed the valley of the Ohio as their territory; the English claimed it as theirs. The dispute was of long standing.

The French claim was based on discovery; the English claim, on the seato-sea charters of Virginia and other colonies and on treaties with the Six Nations. The French refused to admit the right of the Six Nations to dispose of the territory. The English were inclined to maintain the validity of their treaties with the Indians. Especially was Virginia so inclined, for a large share of the Ohio lay within her chartered domain.

The quarrel had entered its acute phase in 1749, when both the rival claimants took action to assert their sovereignty. The Governor of Canada sent an envoy, Celoron de Blainville, with soldiers, to take formal possession of the Ohio for the King of France. In the same year the English organized in Virginia the Ohio Company for the colonization of the same country; and summoned Christopher Gist, explorer, trader, and guide, from his home on the Yadkin and dispatched him to survey the land.

Then appeared on the scene that extraordinary man, Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, erstwhile citizen of Glasgow. His correspondence from Virginia during his seven years' tenure of office (1751-58) depicts the man with a vividness surpassing paint. He was as honest as the day--as honest as he was fearless and fussy. But he had no patience; he wanted things done and done at once, and his way was THE way to do them. People who did not think as he thought didn't THINK at all. On this drastic premise he went to work. There was of course continuous friction between him and the House of Burgesses. Dinwiddie had all a Scot's native talent for sarcasm. His letters, his addresses, perhaps in particular his addresses to the House, bristled with satirical thrusts at his opponents. If he had spelled out in full all the words he was so eager to write, he would have been obliged to lessen his output; so he used a shorthand system of his own, peculiar enough to be remarkable even though abbreviations were the rule in that day. Even the dignity of Kings he sacrificed to speed, and we find "His Majesty" abbreviated to "H M'y"; yet a smaller luminary known as "His Honor" fares better, losing only the last letter--"His Hono." "Ho." stands for "house" and "yt" for "that," "what,"

"it," and "anything else," as convenient. Many of his letters wind up with "I am ve'y much fatig'd." We know that he must have been!

It was a formidable task that confronted Dinwiddie--to possess and defend the Ohio. Christopher Gist returned in 1751, having surveyed the valley for the Ohio Company as far as the Scioto and Miami rivers, and in the following year the survey was ratified by the Indians. The Company's men were busy blazing trails through the territory and building fortified posts. But the French dominated the territory. They had built and occupied with troops Fort Le Boeuf on French Creek, a stream flowing into the Allegheny. We may imagine Dinwiddie's rage at this violation of British soil by French soldiers and how he must have sputtered to the young George Washington, when he summoned that officer and made him the bearer of a letter to the French commander at Fort Le Boeuf, to demand that French troops be at once withdrawn from the Ohio.

Washington made the journey to Fort Le Boeuf in December, 1753, but the mission of course proved fruitless. Dinwiddie then wrote to London urging that a force be sent over to help the colonies maintain their rights and, under orders from the Crown, suggested by himself, he wrote to the governors of all the other colonies to join with Virginia in raising troops to settle the ownership of the disputed territory. From Governor Dobbs of North Carolina he received an immediate response. By means of logic, sarcasm, and the entire force of his prerogatives, Dinwiddie secured from his own balking Assembly 10,000 pounds with which to raise troops. From Maryland he obtained nothing. There were three prominent Marylanders in the Ohio Company, but--or because of this--the Maryland Assembly voted down the measure for a military appropriation. On June 18, 1754, Dinwiddie wrote, with unusually full spelling for him: